The first time I got to know about shrimp farms and abuses was when I lived in India. A shrimp farm is an aquaculture business for the cultivation of marine shrimp or prawns for human consumption. The current consumer demand for shrimp is fuelling an environmental crisis in some of the world's poorest nations. Shrimp farming can adversely affect wild fish stocks through pollution and destruction of wetlands, through unsustainable levels of bycatch during shrimp collection from the sea and through the introduction of diseases. Moreover, shrimp farms of all types can cause severe ecological problems wherever they are located. For extensive farms, huge areas of mangroves were cleared, reducing biodiversity. During the 1980s and 1990s, about 35% of the world's mangrove forests have vanished. Shrimp farming was a major cause of this.
Intensive farms also cause other problems. Their nutrient-rich effluents are typically discharged into the environment, seriously upsetting the ecological balance. These waste waters contain significant amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics that cause pollution of the environment.
It is not only the coastal environment that is under threat, but also the lives and livelihoods of countless people who depend upon the services provided. More traditional subsistence economies are undermined as shrimp farms frequently "privatise" public lands and waterways, and restrict local subsistence fishery activities (both through destruction of habitat and preventing access). Hundreds of thousands of coastal people have been displaced, in some cases following land seizures involving use of force.
Child labour has been reported from a number of countries. Children either collect shrimp fry, spending long hours in water, or work in processing plants for long hours in often squalid condition. Education and health are seriously compromised.
Women's lives have been especially impacted as their access to resources and water have diminished. Women have suffered sexual abuse and violence in processing plants and at the hands of armed shrimp farm guards.
(A report has been recently published on the CNN website. Click here to view).
