Bottom-Up Approach towards a Human Wellbeing Assessment for the Design of a Management Plan:A Study Case with Contributions to Improve Sustainable Management of Resources in a Northern Area of Mozambique

The loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services disturbance will result in serious ecological and socioeconomic consequences. How can people be prepared to be more efficient in preserving ecosystems, its services and resources? The Messalo Wilderness Area (MWA) is an area lacking a bottom-up approach for the design of a management plan. This research intended to develop a strategy to gather people’s views to begin a human wellbeing assessment for the area, for which a Digital Questionnaire (DQ) was developed and tested. The specific objectives were to 1) verify the dispersion/distribution of people and elephants;2) study the natural resources used by the inhabitants;3) locate the areas from where the most important natural resources are extracted and where conflict between humans and animals occur;4) propose a Management Plan (MP) capable of mitigating the human-animals conflict, promoting the conservation of elephants and, consequently, of other types of biodiversity, thus working towards a better socio-economical development of the area. The elements gathered in the consulted references were used to design several maps and cartographic figures shown in this article, using the Map Window software. These maps describe: fresh water distribution, habitat distribution, population dispersal and main road connections, crop fields distribution and main exploitation spots of the different resources, orography and topography. The results from the DQ analysis helped to gather indicators to the human wellbeing assessment. The information gathered in the literature and by inquiry was effective in confirming the high dependency of local people on land and sea resources, as well as the conflicts between people and wild animals, such as elephants and African wild dogs, and the reasons for those conflicts. The DQ is effective in gathering people’s opinions and it constitutes an important tool in a bottom-up approach to the design of a management plan as to the design of the MP for the MWA.

Water productivity for living aquatic resources in floodplains of Northwestern Bangladesh

Objective:To measure the productivity of water on the floodplain land in terms of fisheries and living aquatic resources based on two floodplain beels in Bangladesh.Methods:Among two beels,beel Mail is practicing community based fish culture management,and beel Chandpur is open access and improperly managed.The production and market price data of fish,snail,and aquatic plants were collected by direct observation based on 30 samples fishers in the year 2006-2007.This study also collected production related water quality data,such as water temperature,pH and dissolved oxygen.Results:The water quality data are found within the normal range.Net aggregated water productivity values based on production costs were TK 8016.23 ha^(-1)and TK 3912.9 ha^(-1)and based on all cost TK 7160.97 ha^(-1)and TK 3741.13 ha^(-1)at beel Mail and beel Chandpur,respectively.The contribution of fish,snails and aquatic resources were 96.50%,3.10%,and 0.40%of the gross aggregated water produced in beel Mail and 87.85%,8.38%,and 3.77%in the beel Chandpur.The water productivity values in beel Mail are higher than in beel Chandpur due to the intervention of community based fish culture.Conclusions:The proper management and techniques of harvesting fish through appropriate number of fish fingerlings stocked,good quality of fish fingerlings,size of beel,good fencing and well defined embankment,etc.can help to improve the productivity of water in the beel areas.