Socio-institutional Considerations of Fishway Implementation at the Community-level in Southeast Asia

Analytical framework: Community-based Natural Resource Management

This study draws on the concepts of community-based natural resource management and institutional bricolage to view the interactions between fishway infrastructure and local communities, including the ongoing institutional arrangements between stakeholders for management of the sites long-term. As fishway infrastructure operate at the nexus of fisheries management and water management, we anticipate that their real-world ongoing management will involve a patchwork of institutional arrangements based on contextual factors at each site (i.e. cultural norms), as well as formal procedures from both fisheries and water departments (or their equivalents), such as Farmer Water User Communities or Fisheries Communities.

In the development context, water management has the ultimate goal of supporting human development (Lenton & Muller, 2009). In the Lower Mekong Basin, including Laos and Cambodia, aspects of natural resource governance have been devolved to the community level. In Laos, Participatory Irrigation Management has seen the establishment of Water User Groups (IFAD, 2019) and in Cambodia, a Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) approach to irrigation management has been implemented as Participatory Irrigation Management and Development (PIMD) since 1999, creating Farmer Water User Communities (Chou, 2010).

In relation to fisheries management, 365 Fishery Communities were established across Cambodia in 2001 after fisheries management system reforms (Ishikawa et al., 2017). In Laos, community-based fisheries governance has developed around the establishment of Fish Conservation Zones (FCZ), the rules of which villagers themselves have ownership over (Baird & Flaherty, 2005). In Indonesia, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) within basins is conducted through development plans and the establishment of River Basin Institutions in each River Basin Territory (ADB, 2016). However, this fisheries governance, while undergoing some decentralisation (Satria & Matsuda, 2004) is still described as a ‘command and control’ model, radiating from central government (Dudayev et al., 2023) despite the small-scale fisheries nature, particularly within the marine sector (Jaya et al., 2022), which receives much of the focus.

CBNRM is essentially an approach to natural resource management that prioritises the devolution of power and authority over natural resources to local institutions and community members, away from central government, as a means to achieve both socioeconomic and biodiversity outcomes, and empower communities to enact their traditional ecological knowledge while legitimising indigenous property rights (Kellert et al., 2000). These approaches are largely associated with the management of common pool resources such as water, fisheries, forestry, wildlife and protected areas, but some projects have performed better than others (Armitage, 2005). Success in CBNRM often leads from genuine community ownership of the project (Measham & Lumbasi, 2013) as well as the capacity of participants, including social capital, leadership and a joint vision (Mountjoy et al., 2013).

CBNRM failures can be driven by a range of factors and are often associated with a lack of community empowerment and top-down project conception which can contribute to a misalignment or misunderstanding of how institutional arrangements will influence and impact on local poor people, minorities and their livelihoods (Meashman & Lumbasi, 2013). Examples include the coercion of rural poor into sedentarised and modernised agriculture; the underutilisation of forest resources that forest-dependent communities rely on; the reliance on, and domination of, outsiders such as donors and NGOs; and the weakening of local institutions through misalignment of state and community goals (Dressler et al., 2010).

In light of these challenges, more recent scholarship on CBNRM and governance of the commons has focussed on a more critical perception of local institutions. Where mainstream paradigms of institutions focussed on the ‘rules of the game’ (Ostrom, 1990), critical institutionalism focuses on the complexity of institutions, how they are socially embedded and historically developed, and the relationship between the formal and informal, traditional and modern (Cleaver, 2012). This draws attention to the power structures and social dynamics of context, not just in relation to natural resource governance but in seemingly un-related cultural contexts such as ceremonies, clubs and other social interactions (Whaley, 2018). This allows for the ‘bricolage’ of institutional dynamics to be visible, that is the processes through which people negotiate and reassemble their institutional arrangements into institutions that have multiple functions (Cleaver & de Konig, 2015).

These bricolage practices can be categorised as ‘aggregation’, the embedding of new institutions into existing local institutions; ‘alteration’, the adaption of existing institutions, and; ‘articulation’, the rejection of newly introduced institutions (de Konig, 2014). Institutional bricolage has been helpful for scholars investigating community-based resource management issues such as community consultations (Walter & Urkidi, 2017) forestry (Kimengsi, & Balgah, 2021), and water management (Whaley & Cleaver, 2017). Given that fishway implementation takes place at the nexus between integrated water management and fisheries management, and the physical structures are embedded into existing socio-political contexts, community based NRM through a bricolage lens is relevant to this study.

Case sites

This research is part of a larger project focussed on building demonstration fishways throughout Southeast Asia while also building institutional capacity within countries to take on fishway projects themselves. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate case study fishway sites across the three countries of the project (Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia). Specific fishway sites (13) to focus on were purposively selected to include a mix of locations (different provinces/districts), fishway types, funders, and cost, while all on irrigation rather than hydropower barriers (see, Figure 1 and Supplementary Table S1).

Figure 1

Fishways in Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia have been funded through loans from banks such as the Asian Development Bank and The World Bank, as well as development donor and research agencies such as Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), USAID, and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Implementation usually lies with the relevant Ministry of Public Works (irrigation) in the first instance, with collaboration from relevant fisheries departments, local authorities, and often international expertise to support the process. Australian-funded fishway development in the Lower Mekong Basin commenced with the construction of a fishway in 2012 at Pak Peung, a wetland in Paksan district on the Mekong River floodplain where surrounding villagers had perceived the health of their wetland to have diminished after the installation of an irrigation regulator in 1986 (Millar et al., 2019). Since then, at least 18 further fishways, of various types and scales, have been implemented in Laos (Baumgartner et al., 2021b). This study focussed on Pak Peung; Mak Hieu, a vertical slot fishway close to Vientianne City; Nam Pok, a vertical slot fishway in Vang Vieng Province; and Houy Soui and Houy Phine in Savannakhet Province, which are a dual cone and fish friendly apron/culverts fishways respectively (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Within Cambodia, several fishways have been implemented in Pursat province, funded by JICA, USAID and ADB. The first Australian-funded fishway (Sleng) was constructed in the Tonle Sap catchment within Siem Reap province in 2023 (ACIAR, 2023). Included in this study were Kbal Hong, a cone fishway; Damnak Ampil, a halfcone fishwy; Damnak Chieu Krom, a vertical slot fishway; and Romlech, dual bank cone fishway, all in Pursat province. In Siem Reap province, the study focussed on Sleng, a vertical slot fishway, and two proposed fishway places at Sambor and Takor (see Figure 2).

Indonesia’s first fishway is at Perjaya dam in the upper Komering River, South Sumatra, where the dam barrier has hindered migration of fish between the upstream and downstream of the dam (Atminarso et al., 2024). The dam was constructed in 1991, funded by the Japanese Government, to boost rice production in the region and was equipped with a fishway at time of dam construction (Atminarso, 2023). Perjaya fishway is a notch-submerged orifice (see Figure 2).

Data collection and analysis

The data for this study was generated face-to-face in September and October 2023. The study took a qualitative approach to explore the interactions between fishways and the communities they are embedded into. Data collection activities (Table 1) were semi-structured interviews (15) and group discussions (26) with fishway stakeholders (government staff at national, provincial and district levels, NGO staff, fishers, communities, etc.) in Laos PDR, Cambodia and Indonesia. Participants were purposively selected as key informants (i.e. fisheries and irrigation staff, community leaders and members) related to selected fishway sites, through professional networks of project partners. A first phase of data collection at the regional level had already taken place (Bond et al., 2024) and provided a high-level overview of the fishway programs of each country, drawing on insights from key informants at the national level, and assisted with the design of interview guides and research focus for in-country data collection. This study took point of departure in that regional perspective, to focus on each country and case fishway sites within them. Those invited to participate in this study were therefore operating at the provincial and local levels, to provide a different perspective and more localised insight. Respondents were invited to participate in the study based on their role in relation to fishway management at the provincial level, or the site-specific fishway management. Group discussions at the community level included people who held official leadership positions and those that did not.

The broad interview guide was the same for interviews and group discussions (S2). Respondents were asked broadly about when they had first heard of the concept of fishways, how the fishway at a particular site came to be there (funding, designers) and which stakeholders were involved in that decision-making. Respondents were asked about contextual factors of each case site (i.e. demographics, state of fisheries, dominant livelihood strategies, gendered division of labour, etc.). Questions also covered what the respondent(s) thought the desirable characteristics of a ‘good’ fishway are, what challenges they had regarding the fishway at their site relative to their role, and what lessons they had learnt from the process of implementing a fishway at a particular site.

Data collection activities were conducted with the help of interpreters, who were also project staff, except in Cambodia where an independent interpreter was able to be sourced for the activities in the regions. The interviews and group discussions were mostly audio recorded and transcribed. Data analysis was facilitated by Nvivo 12 and consisted of three rounds of inductive thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2016). The first two rounds of coding were undertaken by a research assistant and were mostly descriptive coding and concept coding. The final round of coding moved the data from these codes into themes (socio-cultural dimensions; socio-institutional dimensions; socio-economic dimensions; community benefits; and social licence). These themes were converted to ‘lessons learnt’ and recommendations as a way to communicate the findings, as presented in the following section. The research was approved by the Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics Committee under protocol H20116.

The social licence of fishways needs to be established with surrounding communities and renegotiated over time

Community consultation needs to occur prior to construction of the fishway and be sustained across the build process and beyond. Our research found instances when communities living around the fishway were not informed of the construction. One or two members of the community might have been informed, or even visited another fishway to be introduced to the concept, or attended a groundbreaking ceremony at another location. However, the rest of the village were not informed about construction. A community leader near the Romlech site in Cambodia was quite annoyed that he was not informed about the fishway being built in his village and found out about it when he asked a construction worker what they were doing:

A lack of community consultation can contribute to community misconceptions regarding the nature of fishways and the work of project team members to monitor their performance. This was illustrated by the beliefs held by some community members around the Romlech site in Cambodia that the purpose of the fishway was to harvest fish for commercial gain by the monitoring team [C12].

A major reason to not only inform communities about fishway construction but to hold genuine consultation and/or engagement with them prior to construction is to manage expectations and discuss potential future monitoring and management that authorities will ask the community to lead or contribute to. These specific management arrangements are discussed in “lesson 5”. However, these arrangements need to be negotiated before construction, and renegotiated over time. While a social contract might be negotiated between local authorities and communities at the establishment of the fishway, these structures persist in the socio-ecological context for generations and that social contract needs to be renegotiated over time.

This was evident in the Perjaya case in Indonesia. The Perjaya dam and fishway were built in the 1990s and in that time, the population in the surrounding communities has changed. Many subsequent generations had no knowledge of the original construction, nor the arrangements that were agreed at the time of construction:

The current situation sees people fishing in the fishway extensively harvesting migratory fish. These fish cannot complete their migration and, in this case, the presence of a fishway actually makes the fish easier to catch. While fishing in the fishway has been an issue at Perjaya since construction (discussed in “lesson 4”), this does highlight a crucial point: the expectations around management of the fishway may change over time as the population changes.

Communities should benefit from fishway implementation (at least not be harmed)

Another element of why communities should be brought into fishway discussions prior to construction is that they will directly benefit or be at risk from the project. An increasing number of community members have witnessed and understand the impact of irrigation structure development on fisheries stocks. In the most direct sense, communities may benefit economically from infrastructure development if they are provided employment through construction activities (either of the fishway or the dam/irrigation barrier itself), which occurred at Houy Souy [L08] and Pak Peung [L15] in Laos.

Communities can indirectly benefit from fishways through economic activities that surround the fishway. In Laos and Cambodia particularly, local authorities see fishways as being potential tourist attractions for local and international tourists, such as at sites near Vang Vieng [L01, L02] and Siem Reap, with one respondent stating “If we can do good dissemination maybe we can connect it or link it with the international tour package in the future” [C09]. In addition to direct fishway tourism initiatives, discussions with representatives from conservation agencies and agriculture and environmental related ministries within Cambodia noted the opportunity to better draw the connection between the outcomes of fishways and endangered river dolphins which have been an important and popular tourism drawcard [C13, C14, C15]. In further considering the potential opportunity to leverage fishways to support tourism, respondents in Indonesia, speaking about Perjaya fishway, stated that security would probably be an issue [I03].

Fishway places (i.e. the sites of dams and fishways) can pose a risk to communities, particularly in relation to drowning. A 12-year-old child reportedly, and tragically, drowned at Sleng Dam, Cambodia, in the year prior to fishway construction, during a period when water was higher than the bollards on the spillway [C06]. Similarly, in Laos, the community at Nam Pok have concerns about children swimming in the river and getting caught up in a gate adjacent to the fishway [L04], and community members at Mak Hieu would like the fishway there to be covered with a screen to improve local safety [L07]. However, each community may have different notions of what safety looks like for them, noting the place-based and contextual nature of the fishway sites.

An indirect risk to communities is the damage to community assets from the construction of fishways. This was only found at Mak Hieu, where bank erosion had damaged a community structure (Figure 3). Respondents understood that the fishway budget didn’t cover extended bank protection and claimed that the erosion wasn’t a serious issue because the land was community owned rather than privately owned [L07]. Provincial leaders in Vang Vieng also noted that the land tenure surrounding the fishway site is important and if the site is too steep and near private land, they should select a different site or different fishway [L01]. This was reportedly done at Nam Pok, where the side of the river chosen for the fishway was that not under private land tenure [L04]. Land under tenure regimes other than private ownership also have value. Due consideration of how the fishway construction might impact on the broader area should be considered.

Figure 3

Across our interviews, irrigation engineers were also often quick to point out fishway safety concerns. As one respondent stated, these engineers “believe that if they apply the fishway it’ll bother the structure of the dam” [I07]. Such concerns are certainly understandable given, for instance, exposure to earthquake risks and/or the lack of detailed engineering drawings for many existing dams. Given this, some engineers held that fishways on new dams should be prioritised and, when installed in relation to existing dams, fishways should be constructed around the barrier to avoid the existing structural foundations [I08]. Some irrigation engineer representatives also advocated for prefab construction methods as a means of further minimising the potential impact of fishway installation on existing infrastructure assets [I08]. Whether such approaches are viable will require ongoing engagement across irrigation engineers and fishway design and construction experts.

Consider the socio-cultural context of the fishway place

It is important to consider the social context within which a fishway is being embedded. Communities living around the fishway have existing relationships, dependencies and connections to their natural environment which a fishway (and associated management) may interrupt. In order to understand how the fishway may influence communities, it is important to first understand how communities interact socially and with their natural environment. In relation to fish and fishing, there is a gendered dimension where women and men tend to use different gear, at different locations, at different times of the day, resulting in different catch sizes [L11].

There also may be ethnic differences in access or use of resources. In Cambodia, Cham people living in towns seasonally (approx. September – October) move to the riverside near Danmak Ampil site to fish [C03] and tend to be more reliant on fish in the diet than Khmer people for cultural reasons [C02].

Communities may also have spiritual connections with the sites that fishways are embedded into. Communities around Takor, Cambodia, spoke of the role of the spirits in the drownings in the past of one man and two children in the fish conservation lake.

In Indonesia the fisheries authorities draw on ‘local wisdom’ to resonate their message of sustainable fisheries management to the communities, undertaking activities such as auctioning access and fishing rights to small areas of water [I06]. Existing cultural practices should be understood and may provide avenues for engaging communities in sustainable fishway management. Religious elements are also observed by communities in Laos and Cambodia, such as not fishing on Buddhist days or in lakes next to a Pagoda [L13].

Consider the socio-economic context of the fishway place

A key management concern of fishways, is that communities don’t fish in the fishway during fish migration season, to allow the fish to pass the structures and complete their lifecycles. However, due consideration needs to be given to the livelihoods of communities surrounding the fishway, their reliance on fish and their opportunities for alternative livelihoods. There was much discussion throughout the data collection period, across all countries, about fishing in the fishway. This was highlighted as an issue in Laos by local authorities [L02] with instances of netting across fishways being identified and one interviewee, somewhat cynically identifying that “if there are fish, people will fish there [in the fishway] for 72 hrs a day” [L16]. Other Laos representatives, however, noted how fishing in fishways can be constrained by its underlying visibility and social norms. Within Laos, there are clear rules around illegal activity and while this still occurs, there are set sanctions in place for wrongdoing, usually a fine [L06, 08], which will be further discussed in “lesson 5”. Equivalent concerns were also raised in Cambodia but not to the degree it is at Perjaya in Indonesia. At Perjaya, fishing within the fishway is a major problem. Fishing within the fishway is visible and organised: groups of fishers (often families) have a timetable of sorts, where access to specific baffles at specific times has been agreed upon and those outside the group are excluded [I04].

While the dam operators and authorities have tried to stop people fishing in the fishway, through signs, awareness raising and previous patrolling by the army [I04] this has not worked. A key explanation for why this open illegal activity is seemingly tolerated is the perception that people fishing within the fishway have no alternative livelihood. This was similar in Cambodia, where previous fishing in the fishway at Damnak Ampil was tolerated because “those are starving people, they don’t have a boat” [C02]. In Perjaya, the people fishing in the fishway previously had fruit plantations (durian, orange) as their main livelihood, but fishing has now become their main livelihood:

However, the fisheries extension personnel questioned this lack of alternative livelihood narrative, instead suggesting that these people are too ‘lazy’ to pursue alternative livelihoods such as aquaculture which require work and capital [I02]. Further, other respondents suggested that there was an element that these people felt that it was their right to fish in the fishway:

While the aim of the fishway is to increase the fish population through passage across irrigation structures allowing for lifecycle fulfilment, this depends on fish not being captured in the fishway. Communities’ livelihoods are a significant consideration for a fishway project, particularly whether fishing is the mainstay of their food security and livelihood or a component of a more diversified livelihood strategy. Most households living around fishways are dependent on agriculture, mainly rice, and face challenges such as poor soils [C11] and flooding [L11]. Fewer households are entirely dependent on fishing, but this needs to be considered for each place – and whether that may change in the future given challenges to farming. Communities across the study sites all face challenges to their livelihoods. In Cambodia and Laos, many villages have experienced out-migration of working age members either to other provinces, the capital city (i.e. Phnom Penh) or internationally (Thailand, Korea, Malaysia) [C05, L04]. When it came to discussions regarding the viability of managing fishing in fishways through either firm-handed, enforcement-based approaches or through the management of the underlying socio-economic needs of local communities, respondents identified a number of opportunities for fishway advocates to connect with related initiatives. These included the work of conservation-based NGOs and government ministries to establish and monitor conservation zones, expand aquacultural activities and support local farmers to generate other sources of off-farm income through eco-tourism and small, home-based business activities [C14, L17, L18, L19].

Consider the socio-institutional context of the fishway place

In order for fishways to run efficiently, they require irrigation and fishway gates to be operated appropriately, debris to be removed from structures and people to allow fish to pass through the fishway and not use it as a collection point. For each of these activities, the communities living around the structure are usually asked to help with or take this work on, either as leaders or as labour. In Cambodia, upon construction, fishways are ‘handed over’ to communities to operate, with oversight from local authorities. In Laos, local authorities oversee operating any gates, but ask communities to physically operate them. Depending on the structure this can be challenging. For example, the gate operator at Damnak Chiheu Krom is contracted by the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology (MOWRAM) to operate the mechanised gate system [C04], but in Laos, many of the structures are not mechanised and require multiple people to open the gates, such as two people at Nam Pok [L04] and five or six at Houy Phine although it is still difficult for them [L11]. At Perjaya, gates are operated by the employed gate operators only [I01].

This community involvement in Laos and Cambodia makes use of existing community-based natural resource management institutions. In Cambodia, water user groups are well established in some, but not all, of the fishway places. In Laos, there are community-elected irrigation helpers (to open gates) but fisheries groups are more established, particularly around fish conservation zones (FCZ). At Damnak Chihieu Krom, Cambodia, the water user group is well established where households can become registered members, accessing water for US$10/ha, which covers operation and maintenance costs. However, this is not without challenges as local elites asked for their constituents to not pay the fee before the last election, there are some structural issues that the budget cannot cover, and some people steal water with hand-made equipment [C04]. In contrast at Romlech, the water user groups are not operating well and the gate operators struggle to manage as locals and outsiders argue about opening the gates, and even come in the night to break the lock and open the gates. Respondents stated:

In Kbal Hong, respondents claimed there was no water user group or fisheries group, but thought a future combined group would be worthwhile and they would like to be involved, although they weren’t able to get enough volunteers to be in a water user group in the past. The respondent who opens the gates stated that “I don’t have authority” to stop people fishing in the fishway and the group highlighted that it would be critical to get the right people on the committee as in a nearby village:

In Laos, many of the sites where fishways exist have established community fisheries groups who are used to operating and maintaining fish conservation zones. However, some of these groups are inactive due to a lack of funds [L09, L11]. The management relationship for operating the gates seems to be clearer in Laos, perhaps due to the length of time fishways have been present. The District Agriculture and Forestry Office liaises with communities through the village headperson (Naiban) and community members inform the district level authorities when there are any issues (i.e. breakdown), who in turn inform the provincial level authorities [L01]. While there are no specific committees for the fishway, the existing fisheries and water committees could manage the rules [L02]. However, there is still a potential gap between the appropriate functioning of community-based NRM groups related to fisheries and water management and the appropriate management and operation of fishways to optimise fish passage (i.e. timing and degree of gate opening etc.).