Climate change adaptation, aquaculture and Karma
I am an aspiring social entrepreneur based out of the Greater Boston area. I have a plan that’ll give seafood-lovers a unique opportunity to use their consumer power to build resilience among vulnerable populations in climate-change ground zero. The plan was judged winner of the New Hampshire Social Venture Innovation Challenge in 2016 and will be supported by the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps grant in coming months.
I grew up in the backstreets of Calcutta (now Kolkata), capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, bordering Bangladesh. Before moving to the United States for graduate studies last year, I studied at the University of Delhi, was part of the Young India Fellowship program and worked for three years as a policy researcher.
In 2015 I conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh as part of a project to investigate the effects of climate-change on rural economies in South and Southeast Asia. While conducting Focussed Group Discussions in remote Munshiganj, I was shocked to learn how little has been accomplished by policy-makers, development agencies and agri-businesses when it comes to ensuring a good life for smallholder farmers in the coastal areas of the country.
High levels of soil salinity due to sea-level rise and recurrent storm surges has made it very difficult for farmers to grow traditional crops such as rice and vegetables. As a result many have transitioned to farming shrimp on their land. However, due to lack of technical expertise and financial depth, shrimp farming remains fraught with risk. Farmers’ yields often suffer because of disease, selling price is often low because of supply chain issues and export shipments often get rejected because of lack of certification. In many cases it has led to debilitating debt and dispossession.
Over the years powerful absentee landlords have come to dominate the growing industry, deploying unsustainable practices, exploiting workers and earning a bad name for aquaculture in the international media.
My plan is to start a social enterprise that sells quality-certified farmed shrimp from Bangladesh in the US market and drives back profits toward increasing incomes, providing access to clean water/nutritious food and protecting natural resources in villages ravaged by climate change. My social enterprise can take the world closer to Sustainable Development Goal 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production), and has overlaps with SDGs 1,5,6,8,10,13 and 14.
I am delighted to have been selected for the UNLEASH Social Innovation Lab in Denmark this year. During those 10 days I will collaborate with my peers on how to sustainably improve productivity in aquaculture, adopt new technologies that can improve the traceability of the product and potentially scale up to reach farmers in other countries with similar problems.
I believe my learning from graduate-level courses in social enterprise and international trade, partnerships in the region and communication skills in Bangla and English will help me position this company as the much-needed credible intermediary in the seafood sector.
I will be based in the New England region of the US for at least another year. A formidable appetite for shrimp among consumers and declining stocks of local wild capture fisheries have led to a demand-supply gap here. My motivation is to fill that gap and build a brand associated with direct action on climate change adaptation. Hence, the name of the company: ‘Karma’.
