Bangladesh – Working With Coastal Communities Toward Resilient Systems
Bangladesh is home to one of the world’s most important shrimp-producing regions, where thousands of smallholder farmers rely on aquaculture for their livelihoods. Many of these farms are located along the edges of the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world, and the only place where Bengal tigers roam among mangroves. There, aquaculture offers vital income opportunities but also poses complex challenges for conservation and environmental impact.
Challenges such as disease outbreaks, limited market access, and environmental degradation continue to affect the sector’s sustainability. We set out to address these issues by working directly with farming communities, not only to improve production practices, but to strengthen the systems that support them.
Building from the Ground Up
In collaboration with Luna Shrimp Farms, LENK cluster associations, and other local partners, we launched an improvement project in the Khulna and Satkhira regions. The goal was to help family-scale producers enhance water quality, feed use, and social practices while maintaining their traditional livelihoods in the delta.
As Manager for the ASC Improver Programme, I led the project’s technical design, defining verification processes, data requirements, and improvement milestones. A central focus was to ensure that monitoring and assurance systems were realistic for smallholders, while still aligned with ASC’s global sustainability framework.
By combining local knowledge with structured improvement plans, we helped farmers understand not only what to improve but why. Linking better practices to resilience, income stability, and access to responsible markets.
Innovation at a Human Scale
One of the key innovations explored in Bangladesh was a simplified digital traceability system tailored for small clusters. A system that could allow farmers and exporters to track the products without adding complexity, creating a foundation for transparency that could later scale. The project also prioritized capacity building. Local implementers were trained to guide farmers on environmental and social best practices. Often in feeding, pond maintenance, or post-harvest work.
Reflection: Lessons That Stay With Us
Working in Bangladesh was not easy. The field conditions were challenging, and progress often required patience, creativity, and respect for local realities. Political shifts and economic uncertainty made the context unpredictable. Yet these are the very environments where responsible aquaculture matters most.
Although the project has now ended due to political instability, the lessons we learned there continue to shape how we approach new initiatives. From designing risk-based assurance systems to engaging farmers in collective action, the insights from Bangladesh now live on in my work in Ghana, Indonesia, and beyond.
