Stakeholder Expectations of Future Policy Implementation Compared to Formal Policy Trajectories: Scenarios for Agricultural Food Systems in the Mekong Delta

The development of a coherent and coordinated policy for the management of large socio-agricultural systems, such as the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam, is reliant on aligning the development, delivery, and implementation of policy on national to local scales. Effective decision making is linked to a coherent, broadly-shared vision of the strategic management of socio-agricultural systems. However, when policies are ambiguous, and at worst contradictory, long-term management and planning can consequently suffer. These potential adverse impacts may be compounded if stakeholders have divergent visions of the current and future states of socio-agricultural systems. Herein we used a transferable, scenario-based methodology which uses a standard quadrant matrix in order to explore both anticipated and idealized future states. Our case study was the Mekong delta. The scenario matrix was based upon two key strategic choices (axis) for the delta, derived from analysis of policy documents, literature, stakeholder engagement, and land use models. These are: (i) who will run agriculture in the future, agri-business or the established commune system; and (ii) to what degree sustainability will be incorporated into production. During a workshop meeting, stakeholders identified that agri-business will dominate future agricultural production in the delta but showed a clear concern that sustainability might consequently be undermined despite policy claims of the contrary. As such, our study highlights an important gap between national expectations and regional perspectives. Our results suggest that the new development plans for the Mekong delta (which comprise a new Master Plan and a new 5-year socio-economic development plan), which emphasize agro-business development, should adopt approaches that address concerns of sustainability as well as a more streamlined policy formulation and implementation that accounts for stakeholder concerns at both provincial and national levels.

Introduction
Mega deltas such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta in India and Bangladesh or the Vietnamese Mekong delta are facing multiple challenges including urbanization, industrialization, and substantial environmental changes including climate change, salinization, rising sea levels, and the twin challenges of floods and droughts [1] simultaneously, these deltas are key for agricultural production and have an important role in ensuring national food security and providing local livelihoods. This raises questions of if and how sustainable intensification of agriculture is possible, and who should be involved in decision making to ensure outcomes are equitable [2,3]. Against this backdrop, it is important to develop and implement policies and practices that ensure resilient futures for people in deltaic regions. These futures, however, may be heavily contested, and the development and implementation of coherent policies is often subject to conflicts between different stakeholder groups.
In the Vietnamese Mekong delta, extensive hydraulic development has turned the delta from a 'wild landscape of rivers, ecologically shaped by the flooding of the Mekong river, the monsoon climate and the tides of the South China Sea' into a 'human-controlled waterscape' [4]. In particular, Vietnam's policy of triple rice cropping, as part of a drive to ensure national food security and increase export capacity, led to major changes in the management of water resources within the delta. This is because the triple rice cropping policy involved investing in an extensive network of high dykes to prevent the ingress of floodwaters on to rice paddies during the monsoon season, thereby enabling three crops a year to be harvested instead of the two that were the norm previously. While undoubtedly successful in increasing rice production, the widespread use of triple cropping has led to a view of floods as detrimental to people's lives and the national economy [5][6][7]. However, this anti-flooding policy has had many negative impacts on sustainable development, including pollution and soil nutrient depletion [5,8]. The 2013 Mekong Delta Plan began a shift in the national strategy from food volume to food quality, with actions directed towards more effective water management and significant intentions for sustainable development in the Mekong delta. However, as this paper shows, there are currently issues with policy implementation insofar as the long-term sustainability of efficient production is concerned.
The precise meaning of sustainable intensification and the social, political and economic repercussions of decision making are the subject of much research in the literature [9][10][11]. While sustainable intensification is generally seen as aiming to increase yields while protecting environmental assets such as soil and water, Loos et al. [2] argued that it ignores distributive issues such as food accessibility and exclusion from decision making, which often lie at the heart of food security problems. Evidence suggests that tradeoffs are complex, will be difficult to manage, and may further marginalize the poor. The balance between productivity requirements to feed a growing demand for food are balanced against issues of potential productivity declines through soil exhaustion linked to pesticide or fertilizer inputs [5], equity, poverty and migration issues of displaced workers no longer required to work in efficient mechanized agricultural systems [12,13], and the loss of biodiversity through agricultural land appropriation, toxicity to pollinators, and the broader ecosystems that support agriculture [14].
We did not evaluate the extent to which agricultural planning in the Mekong Delta adheres to criteria for sustainable intensification. Instead, we contributed to debates on sustainable intensification via methodological innovation, through which we explored anticipated and idealized future states of food systems, using the Mekong delta as a case study. To do this, we aimed to: (i) develop a transferable methodology that can be applied to other mega deltas and large river systems facing similar developments, such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta in India and Bangladesh; (ii) understand district-level stakeholder and delta-level research institutions' perspectives of plausible futures for socio-agricultural systems in the Mekong Delta; and (iii) establish how, in turn, these district/delta perspectives align with national and regional policy frameworks. The paper is structured as follows: firstly, a methods section explains the process of building an initial scenario matrix associated with plausible land use projections for 2050 as illustration. This matrix was then introduced to a delta-level stakeholder workshop in March 2019 in Ho Chi Minh City. The results from this workshop are covered in the subsequent section. Finally, the paper provides a comparative analysis of our findings in the light of delta and national level policies and proposes the relevance of this work for other socio-agricultural systems that are undergoing rapid environmental, social, and economic change.

Building a Scenario Matrix
The Mekong Delta Plan presented four scenarios for future economic development. Of these, the Vietnamese government's preferred pathway was 'agro-business industrialization.' This scenario envisages the intensification of agriculture and aquaculture while lifting the local population out of poverty and making 'optimal use of land and water resources, without negatively impacting the environment' [15]. If implemented, this would usher in a new long-term trend in economic development for the Mekong delta.
To understand trajectories towards the agro-business industrialization scenario and the current state of implementation, we developed a scenario matrix ( Figure 1). This also recognises that the understanding of sustainability as well as the choices of policies and the implementation pathways are not definite and are subject to stakeholder competition.
The quadrant choices for the scenario matrix were built prior to the March 2019 stakeholder engagement and based upon initial semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from academia, local and national governmental bodies, NGOs, and private sector actors from year X to year Y (Appendix C). The development of the components that describe the scenarios outlined in Appendix A were also developed through this interaction. The broad principle of the matrix construction built upon that identified in Marcinko et al [16], wherein plausible futures were identified from the intersection of key policy choices and stakeholders' vision of an idealized future. In the work presented here, stakeholders expanded upon this premise to include the context of a 'business as usual' future state, as well as identified which scenario most closely relates to current conditions. Building the scenario matrix centered upon the agri-business industrialization scenario, identified by the government of Vietnam in the Mekong Delta Plan, which favored commercial development but, critically, did not identify who should run these businesses; specifically, it did not identify if these should be run by the private sector in the form of large scale agri-businesses, the so-called "new style" cooperatives, or indeed through the development of agri-enterprise at the commune level, as recent policies suggested. Under this policy, the cooperatives were to be transformed into a commercially oriented 'new cooperative model' by which cooperatives were to develop business plans and to engage more closely with the private sector in order to be better linked to value chains, markets, and capital.
The Mekong Delta Plan also went on to identify a strong interest in sustainable agricultural practices, but without giving details of how they might be implemented. The authors identified, in literature outside of the Delta Plan, that large commercial agricultural practices in Vietnam had typically been dominated by high input (pesticides, fertilizer) approaches that had low sustainability on the decadal scale [17]. However, a growing body of literature has shown that there are examples of agri-business enterprises that make efforts to adhere to broad definitions of sustainability [18,19]. Based on these high-level strategic perspectives, a matrix was developed for use with stakeholders based upon two axes, which represented key choices that need to be made within the context of future socio-agricultural systems of the Mekong Delta. These were: (i) who will be running commercial agriculture; and (ii) to what extent will those practices be describable as sustainable. Between these combinations, we identified 4 plausible scenarios of the future of socio-agricultural systems. stainability 2021, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW socio-agricultural systems of the Mekong Delta. These were: i) who will be mercial agriculture; and ii) to what extent will those practices be describabl ble. Between these combinations, we identified 4 plausible scenarios of the fu agricultural systems. Figure 1. Socio-Agricultural scenario matrix for 2050, based on who is carrying out a what level of sustainability practice is applied. Cooperatives are considered as being the commune level to some degree with commercial interests, meaning agri-busines scenarios might be argued as not fulfilling the agri-business brief of the Mekong Del ever they are present to i) allow assessment of where agricultural systems are today provide an opportunity for stakeholders to express an alternative point of view to th

Development of Land Use Models for Each Scenario
In order to allow stakeholders to envisage what the scenarios develope like in terms of land use, plausible land use outputs for each scenario were d 2050 using the land model CLUMondo ( Figure 2). This model simulates lan as a function of exogenously derived demands for commodities and servi counting for local suitability and competition between land systems . Deman (built-up, rice production, and aquatic products) remained the same for each were calculated based on existing planning data, while the ability of each la provide a service was calculated by multilevel modelling using land use an [20]. For each year, a suitability map was created using logistic regression distribution of each land use and a set of explanatory factors. A total of 21 bio socioeconomic explanatory factors including climate, soil properties, water l ity, and demography were used. The number of explanatory factors was r after multiple collinearity assessments, wherein any two factors with a corr cient > 0.7 were excluded. First, relationships between land use and local exp tors were calculated for the initial year (2014). Second, the CLUMondo mode eterized and calibrated based on the 2014 land use map. Finally, changes in from 2014 to 2050 were simulated under four different scenarios, which incl tive sets of demands for commodities and services and represented different managing the Mekong Delta's land resources [21].
The 2014 land use map of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta was used as a rived from MODIS data at a resolution of 250 × 250m using EVI time serie the 12 classes of the VMD land use map, three classes indicate rice cultivati Cooperatives are considered as being run through the commune level to some degree with commercial interests, meaning agri-business. The left side scenarios might be argued as not fulfilling the agri-business brief of the Mekong Delta Plan, however they are present to (i) allow assessment of where agricultural systems are today, and (ii) to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to express an alternative point of view to that of the plan.

Development of Land Use Models for Each Scenario
In order to allow stakeholders to envisage what the scenarios developed might look like in terms of land use, plausible land use outputs for each scenario were developed for 2050 using the land model CLUMondo ( Figure 2). This model simulates land use change as a function of exogenously derived demands for commodities and services while accounting for local suitability and competition between land systems. Demand for services (built-up, rice production, and aquatic products) remained the same for each scenario and were calculated based on existing planning data, while the ability of each land system to provide a service was calculated by multilevel modelling using land use and census data [20]. For each year, a suitability map was created using logistic regression between the distribution of each land use and a set of explanatory factors. A total of 21 biophysical and socioeconomic explanatory factors including climate, soil properties, water logging, salinity, and demography were used. The number of explanatory factors was reduced to 11 after multiple collinearity assessments, wherein any two factors with a correlation coefficient > 0.7 were excluded. First, relationships between land use and local explanatory factors were calculated for the initial year (2014). Second, the CLUMondo model was parameterized and calibrated based on the 2014 land use map. Finally, changes in the land use from 2014 to 2050 were simulated under four different scenarios, which included alternative sets of demands for commodities and services and represented different pathways on managing the Mekong Delta's land resources [21].
The 2014 land use map of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta was used as a baseline, derived from MODIS data at a resolution of 250 × 250m using EVI time series [22]. Within the 12 classes of the VMD land use map, three classes indicate rice cultivation areas (singleseason rice with shrimp aquaculture, double-season rice, and triple-season rice), two classes indicate aquaculture (aquaculture and aquaculture in forested environments), and three classes indicate cash crops (fruits, sugarcane, and other cash crops).
Scenarios were designed according to the scenario matrix and parameters were set with stakeholders during initial project engagement meetings. In concrete terms, the specificity of each scenario was modelled using the spatial constraint component. This setting represents transitions from one land use to another, which were strictly prohibited or only allowed by predefined changes (e.g., conversion from single-season rice to triple rice was facilitated in low-sustainability scenarios to represent policies aiming at rice production, while commune-farming scenarios were pushing for diversification of production). allowed by predefined changes (e.g., conversion from single-season rice to triple rice was facilitated in low-sustainability scenarios to represent policies aiming at rice production, while commune-farming scenarios were pushing for diversification of production). Once the land use scenarios were developed through modelling, an expert project partner narrative was derived with Can Tho University, the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research, and the local government of Dong Thap to help elucidate the potential impact of such land use change. This consisted of qualitatively outlining what might be expected to occur if a given scenario were to become a reality. The intention of this description was not to act as a specific prediction, but simply to elucidate the type of changes that might be expected and as such to provide some context for the stakeholders to consider and discuss. These are fully elaborated in Appendix A. These maps were made available for the March 2019 stakeholder workshop and presented early on in its process.

Delta Level Stakeholder Workshop Methodology
Following completion of the scenarios, a stakeholder workshop was held in Ho Chi Minh City in March 2019 to capture the perspectives of district-level stakeholders regarding plausible implementation and future directions of the Mekong Delta Plan's agro-business industrialization scenario. The four scenarios presented at the stakeholder workshop were built upon the work of Kebebe et al. [23] and Barbour et al. [24] with the identification of the key axis being associated with strategic socio-agricultural choices as opposed to specific issues. There was an extensive discussion around the perspectives of the stake-  Once the land use scenarios were developed through modelling, an expert project partner narrative was derived with Can Tho University, the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research, and the local government of Dong Thap to help elucidate the potential impact of such land use change. This consisted of qualitatively outlining what might be expected to occur if a given scenario were to become a reality. The intention of this description was not to act as a specific prediction, but simply to elucidate the type of changes that might be expected and as such to provide some context for the stakeholders to consider and discuss. These are fully elaborated in Appendix A. These maps were made available for the March 2019 stakeholder workshop and presented early on in its process. The workshop deliberately did not focus on whether or not stakeholders agreed with the government's strategy; rather, the focus was on identifying stakeholder perceptions on how they viewed the current pathways towards agro-business industrialization highlighted in the Mekong Delta Plan and whether or not current and future practices were likely to achieve these set policy goals. The primary objective of the workshop, therefore, was to define current approaches as well as perceived possible end states (set at a long-range future of 2050) within the over-arching agro-business industrialization scenario of the Mekong Delta Plan.

Delta Level Stakeholder Workshop Methodology
After discussing the matrix, the narrative behind each of the four quadrants was introduced to stakeholders in terms of what those scenarios might mean for agricultural practices and production in the Mekong delta. A summary of the key characteristics of each scenario, validated in the workshop, are given in Appendix A. Once the basis for the quadrants had been discussed and understood as a group, a series of three specific and anonymous questions were asked to each individual stakeholder in the workshop. These were:

1.
Which quadrant best describes the dominant approach to agriculture in the Mekong delta today? 2.
Where would you anticipate the dominant agricultural practice of the delta to be in 2050 if agricultural policy continues as it is trending currently? This is called the Business as Usual condition.

3.
Where would you anticipate the dominant agricultural practice of the delta to be in 2050 if agricultural policy is effectively and optimally implemented? This is called the Idealized condition.
Each participant was able to select a value between 1 to10 for each axis, resulting in a coordinate point that plotted within a specific quadrant or on the line between them. This gave a greater degree of freedom than simply identifying a single quadrant. Thus, the results of the workshop (Figure 3) occurred as a spread of results with each point representing an individual.

Results from Stakeholder Workshop
In the simplest sense, the results of the anonymous identification of stakeholder participants' perception of current and plausible future states of the delta can be seen as, firstly, showing a wide range of opinions as to the current state of the delta. This became apparent in the initial discussion with stakeholders wherein, perhaps unsurprisingly, different sectoral perspectives dominated individuals' outlooks (Figure 3b,e). These range from those that considered community based sustainable agriculture as dominant across the delta to those that identified commercial high intensity agriculture as dominant. This lack of cohesion of opinion served to emphasize the far greater cohesion of the group when asked to identify which of the four scenarios is the most plausible business-as-usual outcome for 2050, with as many as 50% identifying that the current direction of travel was towards the commercially owned high input scenario of agricultural production; the other 50% were evenly distributed amongst the other three scenarios (Figure 3c,e). However, when asked to consider an idealized yet plausible future, some 75% of stakeholders retained that the private sector was dominant, but 42% of these expressed the importance of sustainability in that future. As such, we observed that there was agreement that the future will be dominated by commercialized private sector ownership and management of the agricultural system. However, we also observed concerns that this future, insofar as it is articulated in terms of policy and implementation, would not be sufficiently focused on sustainability.
as it is articulated in terms of policy and implementation, would not be sufficiently focused on sustainability.

Contextualizing Stakeholder Outputs in National and Regional Policy
As seen above, the scenario of commercial sustainable agriculture was the most popular stakeholder choice for a plausible idealized future state. This scenario presents a middle ground wherein traditional knowledge, ecological production, and diversification of production, but also a form of intensification takes place where ecological conditions are appropriate. This is supported by vocational training and other forms of infrastructure, including financial mechanisms (Decision 593/QD-TTg) and transportation links (5-year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020). Successful implementation of these, however, would require an appropriate regional coordination mechanism, which is the main subject of Decision 64/QD-TTg, Decision 625/QD-BKHDT, and Decision 4259/BKHDT-KTDBLT. Therefore, policy makers and implementation agencies need to strike a careful balance between the sustainability and intensification elements that are encouraged in the original Mekong Delta Plan and subsequent policies and how these should link to coherent and integrated national policies.
The stakeholder perspective of what is considered to be business-as-usual recognizes that, in reality, sustainability has a lower profile in policy than commercialization of agriculture. However, that is not to say that the current policy landscape ignores the issues of sustainability. Indeed, as visualized in Figure 3f and shown in the policies listed in Appendix B, national policies may be classified as dominantly falling under our different scenario quadrants in terms of their priorities and emphases, and a number identify sustainability as a key issue. The main problem is the lack of coherence between oftencompeting policies, which may have inherent tensions that pull in different directions in the absence of an effective overall strategic governance mechanism. The centerpiece document, Resolution 120/NQ-CP, for example, included elements that appear to indicate a move towards sustainable agriculture more broadly. The resolution calls for (i) increased vocational training for new high-tech agricultural production techniques; (ii) revision of the triple rice cropping regime; (iii) more efficient use of water; (iv) maintenance of traditional agricultural methods using local knowledge; and (v) production in line with ecological zones. The combination of these provisions creates a good case for the commercial sustainable agriculture scenario. However, Resolution 120/NQ-CP then went on to call for the development of large scale high-tech agriculture, which could also lead to commercial high input agriculture. Indeed, Resolution 120/NQ-CP emphasized value chains, trademark development, and job creation as well as start-up support. Some sections of the resolution explicitly call to 'attract non-state sources of funding, especially from the private sector [and to] enable the private sector to operate in suitable fields.' This broad intensification is in line with the government's emphasis on agricultural restructuring, a strategy emphasized in the 5-year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020. It aims to gear agricultural production towards high-tech, large scale agriculture with high land concentration and better water efficiency. Farmers are to be better-linked with credit organizations, private companies, and scientific and technological institutions. This latter provision aims to expose agricultural production to biotechnology and information technology, including the adoption of new farming techniques that ensure high yield and climate resilient crops. Private sector investment is to be encouraged in rural areas in agriculture, industry, and services, to 'mobilize resources outside of the State [to] promote economic growth, job creation, [and] income generation' [25]. Very little of this can be considered as sustainable agriculture on its own.
While it might be argued that this was simply calling for a diverse agricultural approach on the delta, no guidance regarding the sustainability of these approaches was given. Furthermore, Decision 445/QD-TTg aimed at the commercialization of commune/cooperative dominated production, while simultaneously calling for intensification of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors through land concentration and high-tech production, which further diverges from a future of the community-based or commercially based sustainable agriculture scenarios. As a consequence, the national policy landscape itself, and indeed major individual policies such as Resolution 120/NQ-CP, exhibits considerable potential for contradiction, pulling into opposite directions of commercial high input agriculture versus communitybased sustainable agriculture, or at least suggesting both are developed concurrently but without guidance as to how this might be achieved in reality. This tension is recognized in the anticipation of stakeholders, coupled with the expectation that without a clear geographically and methodologically explicit agricultural strategy to include sustainability in the intensification on the delta, sustainability will be sidelined should things continue in their current trajectory (business-as-usual).

Discussion
The government of Vietnam will shortly finalize a new Mekong Delta Master Plan for 2021-2030, and a new 5-year Socio-Economic Development Plan 2021-2025 along with a 10-year plan for 2021-2030. The government further aims to develop a Mekong Delta Integrated Regional Plan to 2030 with Vision to 2050. Implementation of these plans will be crucial for the future of the Mekong Delta, as it is undergoing processes of high-tech mechanization and land consolidation to enable private large-scale agricultural production. Potential conflicting aims exist for increasing production, moving towards higher-quality products, ensuring food security, and protecting the environment.
These problems occur despite the fact that research on stakeholder preferences shows successful government persuasion of regional delta-level stakeholders to accept the agrobusiness industrialization strategy [26]. It has been widely evidenced by the literature that a significant gap exists between policy making and policy implementation in Vietnam in a range of policy fields including environment, irrigation, and water management [27,28]. Analyzing the Mekong Delta's water governance regime, Ha et al. [29] found limited opportunities for adaptive freshwater management due to problems in vertical and horizontal cooperation, including an almost complete absence of public participation, a lack of knowledge and information sharing, a lack of mechanisms to allow feedback on policy implementation for future improvement, and insufficiently diversified financial resources. Focusing on district level implementation problems, Tran and Weger, [30] showed that farmers in some parts of An Giang province ignored the government's 2007 directive to move from a triple rice cropping regime to a 3-3-2 regime, partly due to concerns about the impact on their livelihoods, with tacit acceptance by local officials. This suggests that a new regional coordination mechanism would need to address at least some of these issues.
Against this background we need to understand stakeholders' concerns, as expressed during the March 2019 workshop, that the delta may not be on a path towards sustainable development and that, instead, future developments may give rise to uncoordinated, exploitative, and localized projects which may generate high levels of income but only for a short, unsustainable period of time. This is essentially a business-as-usual scenario that highlights traditional problems of coordinating policy across and between government levels, sectors, and provinces.
A critical aspect of the findings presented in this paper is the plausibility of sustainable agriculture that is also highly productive. This is the option that dominates the stakeholder perspective, but there is a substantial body of literature which considers the tradeoffs between environment, societal outcomes, and the economy associated with such an approach [31,32]. This can be specifically considered in light of the SDGs and their concurrent needs. Issues of sustainable intensification have been especially highlighted for major river systems and ecologically fragile deltas [33,34]. For example, Amoako Johnson et al. [12], working in coastal Bangladesh, identified that the development of high intensity aquaculture did not compensate for the loss of rice subsistence as employment requirements were minimal, as is often the case with intensification, with migration to urban areas as the consequence. This position is supported by the work of Lazar et al. [13] which identified that the poorest members of the agricultural communities are often unable to find the initial capital to engage with or benefit from sustainable intensification. To ensure equitable outcomes of agricultural change, therefore, it is critical that decision making is inclusive, allows for knowledge exchange, and creates networks that facilitate mutual learning and policy feedback.
Finally, our methodology, which combined stakeholder workshops for scenario production with policy analysis [35,36], is relevant to other major socio-ecological systems where local/regional sites of production or interests are dominated by centralized decision making. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta system, for instance, also has a strategic delta plan developed by the Bangladeshi government called the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. Here, delta development is compounded by issues in policy implementation and issues in creating agreement between stakeholders across government levels, calling into question the relevance and feasibility of strategic delta plans for actual policy [37]. In such a context, policy analysis and stakeholder work enable production of viable co-produced policy approaches incorporating feedback from local and regional governments back to the national policy-making process. Without this feedback there is no adaptation to or of policy and no incorporation of lessons learned during the process of implementation.

Conclusions
During the March 2019 workshop, participants were able to verify the significance of the key axes of the scenario matrix associated with sustainability and intensification as well as between community-led or cooperative-based activities and commercial development as central to policy thinking. There was also a clear agreement that the most desirable future is one wherein the efficiencies of privatization and the development of commercialbased practices are combined with a greater emphasis on sustainability. The scenario workshop identified that while there was a coherence of message between local and central government in terms of agricultural intensity and sustainability policy, there was a clear divergence between central policy as written and delta-level decision makers regarding the assessment of what business-as-usual might practically lead to in the future. Central policy identifies agricultural intensification with sustainability, while district decision makers see the intensification but are unclear how sustainability will be implemented within that context. Such an outcome is a sign of the lack of trust in the coherence, integration, and effective implementation of national policy, including sustainability, at a local level.
The twin processes of intensifying production while protecting the environment may thus be hard to achieve against the twin problems of potentially conflicting policy goals and problems in implementation. Despite changes in national policies and attempts to create a new regional governance mechanism, a sustainable future for the Mekong Delta is far from certain; a renewed focus on specifically addressing how sustainability will play a central role in the future of the Delta as well as explicit land planning are required. Indeed, in aligning the development, delivery, and implementation of policy on national to local level decision making is linked to a coherent, broadly-shared vision of the strategic management of the socio-agricultural ecological system in question, and where policies are ambiguous, and at their worst contradictory, long-term management and planning can consequently suffer. These potential adverse impacts may be compounded if stakeholders have divergent visions of the current and future states of the socio-agricultural system, calling into the question the long-term viability of agriculture and sustainable livelihoods in the Mekong delta and beyond.

Appendix A
Description of the scenarios:

Scenario 1: Community Sustainable Intensification
Proposition: By adopting low-impact, high-sustainability commune-run, high-quality and diverse agricultural strategies, traditional intensification is effectively substituted by the production of high-value products with a minimum of food waste through a sustainable, highly resilient and low carbon food system. (i.) great utilization of flood sediments for fertilization (ii.) greater exposure to floods with less engineering structures (iii.) more efficient use of water to reduce drought (iv.) soil management to reduce drought Agricultural Production: (i.) run by communes (ii.) lower overall yields (iii.) less income ($) in the first 20 years (iv.) lower-calorie food security but higher nutritional food security (v.) sustainable over a long period of time (vi.) less food waste (vii.) high-value crops, aquiculture, and livestock (viii.) uses traditional agricultural methods (ix.) low fertilizer through use of flood sediment and livestock (x.) climate and environmentally resilient (xi.) preserve and enhance mangrove as a coastal defense (xii.) high livelihood support and employment/possible reduced migration.

Scenario 2: Commercial Sustainable Intensification
Proposition: The use of high technology is promoted in this approach, but it can still be used in a sustainable manner. This might include bio-gas generation, technical responses to food waste, and some diversity. Fields are aggregated and mechanized. Unlikely to be able to use sediment as fertilizer in all areas, as it is highly costly not to have three crops.
Flood & Drought: (i.) some utilization of flood sediments for fertilization (ii.) development of substantial engineering structures (iii.) limited soil and water conservation.
Agricultural Production: (i.) run by agro-business-pressure to sell and aggregate land (ii.) same overall yields as current production (iii.) similar income as today ($) over the first 20 years, though declining fertility after that (iv.) same calorie food security, but potentially higher nutritional food security (v.) sustainable over a longer time, but progressive decline in soil health (vi.) less food waste hence intensification of output (vii.) higher diversity of high-value crops, but less than commune run (viii.) medium/high fertilizer use (ix.) some climate and environmentally resilient (x.) medium/high carbon release (xi.) preserve and enhance mangrove as a coastal defense (xii.) lower levels of livelihood support and higher migration

Scenario 3: Community High Input Intensification
Proposition: The use of high technology is promoted in this approach but it can still be used in a sustainable manner. This might include bio-gas generation, technical responses to food waste, and some diversity. Fields remain within the commune and there is some mechanization. Unlikely to be able to use sediment as fertilizer in all areas as it is highly costly not to have three crops.
Flood & Drought: (i.) reasonable utilization of flood sediments for fertilization (ii.) development of some engineering structures (iii.) reasonably high soil and water conservation


extfieldsofstudy: Physics Geography

text:
The provision of travel advice to tourists visiting disaster area: The case of Banda Aceh

Banda Aceh has much revived and transformed into a better degree from the devastating tsunami disaster in 2004. Structural, infrastructure and social transformation have led to the economic growth of the city. One of the contributing factors to the growth is tourism. The number of tourists visiting Banda Aceh has increased progressively every year, with the most significant number coming from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia. To support the tourism development sector, Aceh needs a sufficient infrastructure, high-quality services and complete information about the disaster mitigation preparedness since most of the places of interest, namely the tsunami historical sites, are located in the tsunami-prone area. Lack of official information about the disaster mitigation preparedness becomes one of the critical issues that need to be provided by the government. This paper evaluates the readiness of Banda Aceh Government and its agencies in providing disaster mitigation information to tourists. Data was gathered from a series of interviews conducted with travel agents (tour guide) and Malaysian tourists in April 2019. This paper argues that in the emergence of special interest tourism called ‘disaster tourism’ or ‘dark tourism’ in Aceh’s tsunami-prone area, the availability of disaster mitigation guides or travel advice for tourists are still lacking and need urgent solutions. This paper addresses some practical recommendations for Banda Aceh Government to undertake the issues.

Introduction
Most cities in Indonesia are at risk of disaster, both nature and human-induced. Banda Aceh, as the capital of Aceh Province, has arisen as a tourist destination from the earthquake and tsunami that struck in 2004. Although these disasters have devastated the city and killed more than 100,000 people, the city has now become one of the destinations for "disaster tourism" in Indonesia. Various infrastructures have been built followed by structural and social transformation, especially tourism support facilities, to gain more tourist visits to the areas that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami 16 years ago. The increasing number of tourists has led to the economic growth of the city wherein the tourism economy of Banda Aceh has been recognized globally as one of the important sector for the city. As one of the economic factors, tourism sector in Banda Aceh is growing faster than the tourism sector in other parts of the world, in terms of export, output, value-added, capital investment and employment. Tourism is an essential economic factor, especially as an export, to industrialized and developing nations. Tourism has become the second-highest significant contributor to foreign exchange. Despite being at risk, it is still believed that the tourism sector could bring positive development as well as rapid progress for 2 Banda Aceh city in the future. The tsunami wreckage, which was converted into a tourism destination, has a significant effect on the tourism sector in Banda Aceh city.
The tourism industry was formed by the demand to travel (tourism actors), the availability of supporting infrastructure, the existence of tourism objects and attractions that are supported by a promotion system and good marketing and service to actor's travel (supply). After the tsunami that struck Aceh in 2004, besides the historical and leisure tourism attraction, the Aceh government is now also focusing on the 'special interest tourism' like disaster tourism and dark tourism as the most demanding tourism attraction in Banda Aceh. This type of tourism has naturally been developed in Banda Aceh after the 2004 tsunami due to the interest and scrutiny of tourists to understand the event on a deeper level. The community has also demanded to establish the disaster areas as tourism destination in order to preserve the value and the historical moments of the disaster (Ginting, Fahmi, & Ginting, 2018). This increasing demand and interest has led Banda Aceh Government to take initiatives to establish a few disaster areas including tsunami mass grave, tsunami museum, PLTD Apung, ship on the house, Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, Baiturrahim Mosque, Flying Dome of the mosque, Rahmatullah mosque, and Lampuuk beach, as tourism spots in Banda Aceh city.
These tourism spots are mostly located within the red zone, which is a high disaster-prone area. Information on the disaster-prone area must be widespread to awake the awareness of disaster mitigation in the disaster area. It should be easily accessed by all levels, especially tourists who visitAceh. Comprehensive information consisting of a mitigation plan, including the escape route from place of attraction to nearby evacuation building or open space, is needed to inform tourists as part of the disaster mitigation awareness.
The Aceh Disaster Management Agency (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Aceh, BPBA) has released a map of the tsunami wave and tsunami zone in Aceh Development Agency website. However, it only draws the tsunami wave zone. Therefore, comprehensive information about the location of tourist attraction, the tsunami zone and mitigation building/saver area nearby, must be mapped, to educate the tourists visiting Aceh about its presence in the disaster area and information about mitigation plans. This information can be seen in Figure 1. The tsunami sites that scattered on the coast of Banda Aceh have became a "magnet" for tourist, both domestic and foreign, visiting the city. The escalating number of tourists visiting Aceh has helped the city to increase their income. Previously, in 2004, only 83 tourists came to visit Aceh and significantly . In 2017, the tourism sector contributed IDR 10.87 Trillion to Aceh's Economy. Even though tourism has been proliferating after the tsunami and will continue its dynamic growth into the future, it does not mean the industry will grow smoothly. In some cases, as mentioned by Edgell, et al. (2008) there is inadequate understanding of governments regarding the importance of economic, environmental, and social aspects in tourism. Moreover, there is limited access to current information focusing on tourism affairs.
There is a common aim to protect tourist-consumer by providing a safe, satisfying, and fulfilling experience for visitors (Velasco, 2016). The government should be a central actor in providing access to information about the disaster area to tourist. Under the aegis of the government, it is a concern to have a framework of tourism policy (disaster management plan) and accessible information about mitigation for tourists in a disaster-prone area. It is a must to ensure tourists, as the population of the vulnerable groups, to have the access to the information on disaster management plan and be able to communicate with the related stakeholders so that they can be collaborative in all phases of the disaster (Scarpino and Gretzel in Ritchie and Campiranon, 2015). Therefore adequate information should be provided by the government, to keep tourism afloat in areas that experience natural disasters (Hillingdon, 2017).

Literature Review
A definition of tourism is mentioned by Mathieson & Wall (1982) that "tourism is the temporary movement of people to destinations outside their normal places of work and residence, the activities were undertaken during their stay in those destinations, and the facilities created to cater their needs". As stated under Indonesian Law No.10 of 2009 about tourism, tourism is "various kinds of activities and supported by various facilities and services provided by the community, business people, government, and regional governments". It shows that tourism is highly integrated with many stakeholders. Several plans, programs and directions for tourism are formed and regulated in a tourism policy that consists of various essential aspects to achieve the goal set by the government. One of arising niche tourism types is dark tourism or also called as disaster tourism.
The term of dark tourism has been discussed by Foley and Lennon (1996) and they mentioned that this term is used to describe "……the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites" (Foley and Lennon, 1996, p. 198). Visitation from family and friends were not considered as dark tourism, but it is included in dark tourism if the tourists visit the destination due to the serendipity, planned trip by the tour agents or company, and also because of the curiosity of the people who happen to be in the surrounding area of the destination (Foley & Lennon, 1996). Dark tourism has become an interesting topic for the scholars to study the reasons behind the tourists' desires, motivations, and interest to visit a destination that is associated with death (Bowman & Pezzullo, 2009). This paper focuses on Banda Aceh, Indonesia, which has become a tourist attraction due to earthquake and tsunami that has struck the city in 2004. The number of tourists has increased naturally since the disasters struck. Due to this increasing number of tourists, the Banda Aceh local authorities have developed tourism policy to better manage the tourists.
Many scholars have defined the meaning of tourism policy. Goeldner & Ritchie (2006) defines tourism policy "a set of regulations, rules, guidelines, directives, and development/promotion goals and strategies that provide a framework in which collective and individual decisions directly influence the development of long-term tourism and daily activities in a destination". The similar definition was also mentioned by Edgell, et al (2008), that tourism policy is "a progressive course of actions, guidelines, directives, principles, and procedures set in an ethical framework that is issues-focused and best represent the intent of a community (or nation) to effectively meet its planning, development, product, service, marketing, and sustainability goals and objectives for the future growth of tourism". The same meaning of tourism policy also defines by Velasco (2016), as "a set of discourses, decisions, and practices driven by governments, sometimes in collaboration with private or social actors, to achieve diverse objectives related to tourism". Meanwhile, Biederman (2007) stated that tourism policy is "the direction of action to be taken by a country, region, locality, or individual destination when developing or promoting tourism".
From tourism policies mentioned above, it is clear that fundamentally, the tourism policy should emphasize a set, of course, guideline, directives and planning goals and a course of action for decision making. Tourism policy is 'dynamic'. It should be future-oriented, balanced, comprehensive and flexible enough to allow adjustments and refinements when the occasion arises since it incorporates the interests of the tourism stakeholders.
It is a common aim to protect tourism-consumer, since tourism is an experience or service that is consumed by people, by providing a safe, satisfying and fulfilling experience for visitors. A Policy Instruments for Tourism Policy should be catered in knowledge and information division in particular as a provision and diffusion of knowledge and information, which is communication instruments is one out of five categories of instrument that can be used by the government (Velasco, 2016). The use of any platform of media and application, as communication tools, could be both for raising awareness of specific values, as hospitality, and for supporting promotional campaigns of tourism destinations.

Methodology
This study employed a qualitative approach. This study is based on the perspective of tourists. Data were gathered from a series of interviews. The interviews involved two focus groups which are travel agents (tour guide) and Malaysian tourists. Since Malaysian tourists occupy the highest rank and the ease of meeting Malaysian tourists in Banda Aceh city, therefore the Malaysians tourists are chosen as the respondents. About nine deep interviewees conducted in Banda Aceh in April 2019. During the interview, the interviewees were asked about the purpose of their trip to Banda Aceh, their awareness on the safety procedures that need to be taken if disasters struck, and their opinions on the natural disaster management plans prepared in Banda Aceh. Voice recorder was used to record the conversation. After the interview sessions, the voice recorder was transcribed to verbatim. Then, the data had been analyzed using thematic analysis.

Analysis and Result
According to Braun and Clarke (2006), there are six useful steps in conducting a thematic analysis. The steps include to become familiar with the data, generate initial codes, search for themes, review themes, Ø It could be a safe destination provided that travellers become familiar with natural disaster and its risk Ø A warm welcome of the people & acceptable public transportation to move around Ø Signages of safety procedures are visible in most places. Ø It is safe if the safety precautions and disaster warning has been predicted with scientific researches. Ø Aceh implements Syariah Law, so the crime rate is low.
Action is taken if a disaster (e.g. tsunami and earthquake) strike.
Ø Unclear instruction regarding the actions that must be taken when a disaster occurs. Ø Evacuating coastal area if the destination is in danger of a tsunami Ø Run towards a high place Ø Find the higher ground Ø Not of hand but evacuation measures are displayed in hotels and other tourist spots which might help tourists in deciding what to do. Ø Transfer to the safe place provided by the authority and follow the emergency route. Ø There is no clear procedure given.
Place seek for help if a disaster (e.g. tsunami and earthquake) strike.
Ø Malaysia embassy, Mitigation Centre. Ø Seeking sanctuary in escape building constructed in the highlands as well as rescue stations Ø Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Resource Centre, police, embassy Ø Malaysia ambassador Ø Look for appropriate organization related to the disaster. Ø It is unclear how to contact assistance for help. Ø Any Banda Aceh authority.
The most reliable platform or medium to retrieve disaster-related information.
Ø Mitigation Centre Ø TV Ø Radio Ø Social media Ø Internet Ø Tourist spots should be equipped with the site office of disaster units. Ø News broadcasting and newspaper.
Governments' natural disaster management plan for its residents and visitors.
Ø They must have a perfect plan for both groups. Ø In another state in Padang Sumatera, the government put up signs on evacuation along the main road. Ø It is unclear to the tourists. Aside from the evacuation procedure signages, other plans are not visible Ø The government has a plan only to local people, not to visitors. Reason of requirement information regarding mitigation information system for tourists Ø The number of tourists in Banda Aceh increase every year. Ø Many people always come to visit Banda Aceh Ø Tourist visiting Banda Aceh who is never experiencing the earthquake or tsunami. the evacuation info Ø Compulsory information is given to tourists when arriving through travel agents and other related agencies. Ø Prevention and preparedness are better than cure.
The codes are reviewed based on the interviewee information. Five of the interviewees went to Banda Aceh for a holiday trip. Another four visited Banda Aceh for their class workshop. The workshop involved the discussion with the researchers from TDMRC about the awareness among the tourists about the mitigation plan in Banda Aceh and also a short visit to Syiah Kuala University. Before they visit Banda Aceh, they are already aware that Banda Aceh is located at the disaster-prone area, especially tsunami. The respondents who went to Banda Aceh for a holiday agreed that Banda Aceh is a safe holiday destination as they felt welcomed while in Banda Aceh and an acceptable public transportation system makes it easier for them to move around. One of them said that he could see the safety procedures signages in most places that he visited. The respondents also said that Banda Aceh could be a safer destination holiday if the travellers are familiarized with natural disaster and its risks before visiting Banda Aceh. Adequate safety precautions and disaster warning should also be done be prepared by doing scientific researches on the natural disaster. However, the rest of the respondents did not agree that Banda Aceh is a safe destination to visit.
Majority of the respondents were aware of the safety procedures that need to be taken and the agencies that they should refer to if the natural disaster strikes Banda Aceh. Furthermore, they think that social media and the internet, as well as the mitigation center, are perfect mediums and platforms for them to retrieve information about any natural disasters. Other than that, most of the tourist do not know where to seek help if a disaster strike. In addition, five of the respondents know that Banda Aceh has prepared and implemented the natural disaster management plan during the previous natural disaster. However, the other four respondents are not sure about the existing of the natural disaster management plan.
All respondents said that Banda Aceh government should prepare the mitigation information system for tourists as Banda Aceh receives more tourists every year, and most of the tourists do not know about the natural disasters. The tourists will be more alert on the natural disasters and the evacuation information if they are informed regarding the issues before they visit Banda Aceh.

Discussion, Summary, and Recommendations
Based on the thematic analysis, most of the tourists who have visited and are going to visit Banda Aceh know that they have to find a safe place such as higher ground or head to safe zone area (green area), depending on the types of disasters like tsunami or earthquake. According to Leah, et al. (2012) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018), the higher ground is a mitigation response to the event of a tsunami. During the tsunami strike in 2004, most of Banda Aceh residents survived when they move to higher ground (Vale, et al., 2004). Based on the study, tourist identified the social media, internet, tourist spot and Mitigation Centre as the most reliable platforms to retrieve disaster-related information.
Banda Aceh government intends to make tourism as a leading sector in foreign exchange earnings, create jobs and introduce the nature and culture of Aceh that is Islamic. From the perspective of tourism, tsunami disaster has brought a positive impact on the city. Banda Aceh, besides one of the Islamic tourism destinations, Banda Aceh Department of Tourism also shaping Banda Aceh as "A Tsunami Education City" which is highly potential for the tourism sector. Banda Aceh tourism department had developed a Tourism Strategic Plan year 2017 -2022 as a foundation for reference to sustainable development planning under Law No. 10 2009 concerning Tourism.
To visioning Banda Aceh policy of shaping Banda Aceh as "The Education Tsunami City", some actions should be taken as mentioned by Bierderman (2007) to develop or to promote tourism. In order to achieve the vision of the policy, communication instruments are very essential so that the tourists are  (Velasco, 2016). In order to achieve the policy, one of the actions that should be considered is to spread the earliest information regarding the destination through the internet or media platform about the destination. So, the tourist is being educated through the media platform about the destination before their arrival. By this, we expected tourist to build awareness and prepared/readiness before their journey. A map on figure 1 could be one of the alternatives to introduce the tourists, who intend to visit Aceh, about the position of tourist attraction in the disaster-prone area. This map should be able to be accessed by any platform (internet, social media and other media platforms) that linked to the official department related to disaster and tourism and also incorporation with travel agencies in both countries. The travel agencies in Banda Aceh also found this map would be very useful to be delivered to the tourist during their tour, so they will get the information about the tsunami potential during the city tour visiting each of tourism attraction. The use of any platform of media and application, as communication tools, could be both for raising awareness of specific values, as hospitality, and for supporting promotional campaigns of tourism destinations (Velasco, 2016).
From the respondents' perspective, the signage for the tsunami evacuation route is available in the most high-potential tsunami zone. Unfortunately, many tour guides stated that the tourists are facing difficulties in reading the signage provided. Hence, the tour guides must be capable of providing information to the tourist groups for explaining the signage. This is also emphasized by the tour guide that the Malay Singaporean Tourists were eager to know more on the disaster information. From the respondents' perspective, the signage for the tsunami evacuation route is available in the most highpotential tsunami zone. Unfortunately, many tour guides stated that the tourists are facing difficulties in reading the signage provided. Hence, the tour guides must be capable of providing information to the tourist groups for explaining the signage. This is also emphasized by the tour guide that the Malay Singaporean tourists were eager to know more on the disaster information. Therefore, it is compulsory to include the signage and the map as the Standard Operation Procedure for the travel agent, or known as "Safety Briefing".
In another part, the Banda Aceh government had encouraged their travel agencies to include visiting escape building at any Mitigation Centre in the tourist itinerary. Besides, the government also had taken the initiative to play Smong song in the Tsunami museum (Rahman, et al., 2017). The Smong song is a tradition of indigenous knowledge of tsunami risk that helps inhabitant from Simeulue Island survive during tsunami strike in 2004. The meaning from the song which asks the resident to move to the higher ground when the string earthquake strike followed by lowering of seawater.
Subsequently, this paper evaluates the readiness of Banda Aceh Government and its agencies in providing disaster mitigation information to tourists and some policy actions that need to be taken. Based on the study, only some of the tourists understand and know about mitigation information, but the rest of the tourists still unaware of disaster mitigation information. The Banda Aceh Government and its agencies should implement more effort to deliver mitigation information to the tourist. Signage and any mitigation information should be display at the tourist spot to take tourist attention. Another part, Banda Aceh government has to play a role in educating all stakeholders and strengthening community (such as TAGANA-Taruna Siaga Bencana, Kampung Siaga Bencana, and many others) in providing and training about mitigation information regularly and enriching Community-Based Disaster Preparedness programme (ex: PRBBK-Pengurangan Resiko Bencana Berbasis Communitas) either from government agencies or Non-Government Organization. Therefore, the tourists who involve with the community while city tour will indirectly being educated with the community during their visit.
Other than that, based on the study, tourists will seek help from their embassy or consulate and Banda Aceh authority (police, BASARNAS-National Search and Rescue Agency, BPBA-Aceh Province Disaster Management Agency) and other related officer and Mitigation Centre. Therefore, it is crucial to educate the embassy/consulate regarding the mitigation plan if a disaster occurs. The embassy/consulate also have to train their staffs regarding disaster handling. Besides, understanding ways that the tourist defines risks, recognizes and interprets risks, and communicates these risks to its members is critically important to be implemented. It is because most of the tourist visit Banda Aceh is from Malaysia, which never has experience regarding disaster strike, notably earthquake and tsunami.


Fishing in Salty Waters: Poverty, Occupational Saline Exposure, and Women’s Health in the Indian Sundarban

Collecting wild tiger prawn seedlings, also known as prawn post-larvae (PL), from rivers and creeks is an important occupation for more than 100,000 poor women in India’s Sundarban estuarine delta. Prawn PL collecting requires many hours of immersion in saline river water. This paper uses a large household survey to explore the determinants of poor women’s engagement in this occupation and the health impacts. The results reveal high significance for two variables: (i) the opportunity wage, proxied by years of education and (ii) child-care demands, proxied by the household child-dependency ratio. Together, these variables are sufficient to distinguish between women who have no engagement with prawn PL collecting and those with many years of engagement. The probability of self-reported health problems is also significantly higher for women with more saline exposure from prawn PL collecting and whose drinking water is from tube wells with higher salinity.

Introduction
The Sundarban coastal region of India's West Bengal state is the spawning ground for 90% of the aquatic taxa of India's northeastern coast, including 172 fish species, 20 prawn species and 44 crab species (Chandra & Sagar, 2003) (Note 1). The area is also home to some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Poor women are often seen wading waist-deep for hours in the salty tidal rivers and creeks, dragging triangular nets that collect the seedlings of wild tiger prawn (Penacus monodon) or prawn post-larvae (PL) (Figure 1). The yield from this activity ( Figure 2) is sold to aquaculture farms. It varies by season and lunar cycle; a good day's catch may earn 300−500 Indian rupees (US$ 4−7). Demand and prices were higher in the 1990s, and the market has since shifted toward Venami, an imported species whose seedlings are supplied by hatcheries. At the same time, increased rural wages have diverted male workers to other occupations, leaving prawn PL collection to women whose job opportunities are more restricted. Although engagement in prawn PL catching has declined since the 1990s, this occupation still employs at least 100,000 women in the Indian Sundarban. The seedling population The discu situated on economic replenishm inland praw in this area

Develo
The discus Data on w PL supply,

Survey Implementation
The survey interviewed 4,027 individuals from 901 households in 63 locales spread across the region during February-May 2019 (Appendix A). The household sample was drawn from locales in the 16-gram panchayatssurrounding the Sundarban Reserve Forest, where the discussions described in Section 3.1 were held. The area spans the inhabited part of the region from its northeast to southwest corner ( Figure 3). Women's Self-Help Groups in these gram panchayats facilitated the selection of hamlets with varying levels of prawn PL collection. An average of 4 hamlets were selected from each gram panchayat to ensure variation in the concentration of PL collectors. Approximately 15 households were selected in each hamlet, with scale of land ownership as the main stratification variable.
For the health component of the survey and the econometric analysis described in Section 3.5.3, focus group women and local doctors were consulted to establish a list of 69 relatively common ailments. Information on their incidence in the female population is arguably unique because, to the authors' knowledge, this is the only large-scale, spatially-representative survey that has been administered in the Indian Sundarban. The area is remote; many locales are isolated and unreceptive to outsiders. The survey has been possible because one of the authors conducted extensive research in the Sundarban and is well-known to residents of the region. Tables 1 and 2 show that the sampling design ensured broad representation by gender, age, and education.

Measu
Using the tester, a h collected, from tube engagement in prawn PL collection to their age, opportunity wage (proxied by education), household assets, and child-care demands, indexed by the household dependency ratio. Determining this ratio involved experimentation with alternative numerators (children 0-5, 0-10, and 0-17) and denominators (women 18-60 and 18+). While all yielded significant results, the best fit was provided by children 0-10 divided by women 18-60. Prior expectations were that engagement would be positively related to age and negatively related to years of education, household wealth, and the dependency ratio. The measure of wealth is a count of household assets identified by the survey instrument. The equation is expressed as follows: where, for female i, S i equals the years of engagement in prawn PL collection, A i stands for age, E i represents years of education, H i equals the household asset count, D i is the dependency ratio (children 0-10/women 18-60), and ε is a random error term (which may incorporate spatial autocorrelation).
The second step explored the implications by using the regression estimates to predict years of prawn PL catching at varying levels of education and the dependency ratio for a woman 40 years of age who lives in a household with the mean asset count. Finally, to provide additional insights for policy, the third step fitted a spline regression to the relationship between female age and education in the survey data. Table 5 reports results for equation (1) with four estimators: standard OLS; OLS with robust standard errors; GLS, which allows for differences in error variances for hamlet-level sample clusters; and Spatial, which incorporates spatial autocorrelation among sample observations. In the latter case, the sample size is reduced by unreported location coordinates and elimination of duplicate location observations for women in the same household. All variables have the expected signs: age, education, and the dependency ratio have high significance. However, no significance has been found for household assets. The effect of education is particularly powerful, with an estimated decline of .73 years of prawn PL collection for each additional year of schooling in the large-sample results.  Table 6 provides a summary of education and dependency ratio effects, predicting years of prawn PL collection for a woman 40 years of age who lives in a household with the mean asset count. As shown, great variation is attributable to education and the child dependency ratio. The expected prawn PL collection years are effectively 0 for a woman with 12 years of education in a household with a dependency ratio of 2 or more. Conversely, expected collection years are 12.1 for a woman with no formal education who lives in a household with no children younger than 11. jms.ccsenet where, for female i, P i equals the probability of reporting a significant ailment and S i , C i , and F i represent the respective years of engagement in prawn PL collection, crabbing, and fishing. L i equals 1 if the primary occupation is agriculture and 0 otherwise. A i stands for age, E i equals years of education, H i is the household asset count, T i represents tube well salinity, and ε is a random error term.
Equation (2) was estimated using logistic regression. The results of the regression, reported in Table 7, were used to explore the ceteris-paribus relationships between health, engagement in prawn PL collection and drinking-water salinity. Since the survey exercise collected reports on 69 specific ailments from each woman surveyed, the health impact of prawn PL collection was explored in more detail by re-estimating equation (2) for each reported ailment. In each case, the dependent variable had a value of 1 if a woman reported the ailment and 0 otherwise. Results are available from the authors on request.
The three columns of Table 7 report estimate for standard logit; GLS logit, which allows for differences in error variances for hamlet-level sample clusters; and logit with robust standard errors. The first four variables provide evidence on whether extensive saline immersion during prawn PL collection has a greater health impact than engagement in otherwise-similar riverine activities (i.e., crabbing and fishing, as well as agriculture). The results strongly suggest that saline immersion has a powerful independent effect. While years of prawn PL collection has a positive, highly-significant effect on the probability of a reported ailment, the three comparator variables are insignificant. As expected, the results indicate that older women are more likely to report ailments, all else being equal. Somewhat surprisingly, however, education is not found to be significant aside from its powerful indirect effect via engagement in prawn PL collection. As before, no significant effect is found for household wealth. There is a large, significant effect for drinking-water salinity.  Figure 7 displays the relationships between health and engagement in prawn PL collection and drinking-water salinity, all else being equal. To produce Figure 7a, ailment-reporting probabilities were predicted for years of prawn PL collection in the sample range, controlling for other activities (0 years for crabbing and fishing; 0 for agriculture as primary occupation; age (40); education (6 years); mean household asset count; and mean tube well salinity. As shown, an increase in prawn PL collection from 0 to 25 years leads to a 27.5 percent increase in reported ailment probability (from .570 to .727). Figure 7b predicts ailment reporting probabilities for tube well water salinity in the sample range, controlling for other activities (10 years for prawn PL collection; 0 years for The estimate of female prawn PL engagement in Table 4 is believed to be very conservative, given several potential sources of downward bias. First, it assumes engagement by one woman per household, although many households have more than one female participant in prawn PL collection. Second, the exercise has focused on only nine blocks in the Sundarban, while prawn PL collection also occurs in other delta areas like the adjoining district of Midnapore. Third, the estimates use household counts at the block level from the 2011 Census of India (GOI, 2011), which is the latest one available. However, the number of households has undoubtedly grown since then. In addition, one source of variation can be identified that may bias the estimate either upward or downward. After the initial focus group discussions, sample hamlets were selected at the gram panchayat level to provide representation for cases with high, medium, and low concentrations of prawn PL collectors. However, there was no basis for determining the overall proportion of hamlets within each class.

The Economics of Occupational Choice
The findings on the economics of occupational choice, summarized in Table 5, show that women are highly responsive to opportunity wages and child-care demands in determining whether to engage in prawn PL collection. The resulting engagement is essentially zero for secondary-educated women with high child-care demands and very substantial for women with no formal education and no child-care demands. These findings are in line with other studies of the impacts of child-care responsibilities on mothers' decision to work (Kornstad & Thoresen, 2007;Asai et al., 2015). However, the existing literature focuses heavily on women's occupational choices in high-income countries. The current research provides one step toward filling the gap for poor women in rural Asia.
Surprisingly, the findings indicate that family wealth has no significant effect on women's engagement in prawn PL collection. Given the widespread view that this work entails health hazards, one might expect women in wealthier families to avoid it, all else being equal. The result may be affected by simultaneity bias, since women engage in prawn PL collection to augment family income and wealth. The implications have been checked by re-estimating the prawn PL collection equation with the asset count excluded, and the results are otherwise unchanged.

Environmental Health
The health impact of prolonged immersion in saline water has received little attention in the research literature, perhaps because such exposure is rare in developed countries. Until now, evidence for the Sundarban region has been scattered and anecdotal. But the women in the preliminary focus group interviews, described in Section 3.1, were unanimous in associating health problems with long hours of exposure to saline water in the rivers. The women's belief about the association is important, because their risk perception influences decisions about whether, and how much, to engage in saline-immersive activities. Therefore, the survey responded by asking detailed questions about women's saline-immersive fishing activity and their health status.
As the results in Table 7 show, women who engage in saline-immersive prawn PL collection report significantly more health problems than their counterparts who engage in otherwise-comparable low-wage economic activities. These health problems are clustered in a subset of the 69 ailments enumerated by the survey: irregular menstruation; problems with eyesight; gastric pain; pain in the hands, legs, and knees; skin allergies; and itching. The findings of the research align with previous field studies by B. Kanjilal, reported in Jena (2018), which suggest that prolonged contact with salty water by poor women results in a higher incidence of skin diseases and reproductive-tract infections.
The health regressions in this study strongly support the consensus view of Sundarban women that prawn PL collection entails significant health hazards (Table 7 and Figure 7a). Table 7 shows that years of engagement in prawn PL collection has a highly significant, positive impact on the probability of reporting an ailment, while no significance attaches to the estimated effects for years of crabbing, fishing, or engagement in agriculture.
Alongside the health impact of saline immersion, Table 7 and Figure 7b indicate another significant health impact from ingestion of saline drinking water. Various micro-level research papers have recently assessed the salinity of drinking water in the coastal region of Bangladesh and its impact on hypertension in pregnant women (Khan et al., 2008Vineis et al., 2011;Scheelbeek et al., 2016;Naser et al., 2019). These studies draw on numerous international observational studies and clinical trials that establish a strong link between higher salt intake and elevated blood pressure (Calabrese & Tuthill, 1981;Hallenbeck et al., 1981;Welty et al., 1986;Midgley et al., 1996;He & MacGregor, 2007;Alderman, 2000). The findings of the present research on adverse health impacts of drinking water salinity are in line with this recent literature (Khan et al., 2008Scheelbeek et al., 2016;Naser et al., 2019). and, as previously noted, women's occupational choices are conditioned by differential expectations about the health consequences. It is therefore possible that the significant result for the impact of prawn PL collection on health is auto-generated by prior expectations: Women expect to get sicker when they engage in prawn PL collection, and they perceive more ailments as a result. While this possibility exists, its importance should be discounted for three reasons. The first is empirical. The findings indicate that the significant impacts of prawn PL collection on health are limited to very few ailments among many. It is difficult to believe that a "folkloric" association between prawn PL collection and health would be so confined. The second reason is methodological. Even if each patient were examined by a doctor, the examination results would inevitably reflect self-reported symptoms to a large degree (Note 2). It is therefore not clear that the results of this study could have been tightened, even if the requisite resources had been available. The third reason is psychological. Ultimately, what is the difference between being sick and thinking one is sick? For an affected individual, the attendant suffering is equally real.

The Role of Education
The empirical analysis may also shed light on the broader role of education in this context. A priori, it seems reasonable to suppose that education has two impacts on female health. The first, clearly supported by the results of this study, operates through the opportunity wage. Poorly-educated women with no access to higher-wage jobs frequently opt for prawn PL collection, while their better-educated counterparts do not. One might also expect an additional education effect in the health equation, based on the argument that educated women improve their health in other ways. However, the results register an educational effect on health only through occupational choice. The larger implications of this finding cannot be judged, since survey data rarely include occupational health as an intermediating factor between female employment choices and health outcomes. In this case, the results suggest that poor health is the result of adverse economic choices rather than a by-product of poor education.
The results may also provide some insights for policy. Figure 6 was produced by fitting a spline regression to the relationship between female age and education in the survey data. The result revealed striking educational progress in the Sundarban region. Predicted years of education decline steeply with age: 9 years at age 20, 6 years at 30, 4 years at 40, and 2 years at 60. Given the powerful impact of education on engagement in prawn PL collection, it seems reasonable to predict a rapid decline in engagement as younger, better-educated cohorts progressively dominate the female labor force.

Prospects for Improved Livelihoods
If the current education-induced trend holds, the future locus of ill-health will be in older-age cohorts, which will decline in numbers with the passage of time. But this does not imply that the health damage problem associated with prawn PL collection will be "solved" by the passage of time, since many thousands of older women will remain affected. In addition, a simple trend analysis cannot provide useful insights for policy measures that could improve the livelihoods of women who remain in prawn PL collection.
Environmental sustainability seems likely to play a significant future role in policy-making, since recent research has documented the roles of salinization and overfishing in the decline of prawn PL collection. Water salinity in the Indian Sundarban is rising as climate change affects river flows and sea level. Salinity is already near marine levels in southern areas, with measures of 30 parts per thousand (ppt) or higher. By 2050, regional salinity will intensify considerably, with many northern areas also surpassing 30 ppt (Dasgupta, 2017;Dasgupta et al., 2017;Mukhopadhyay et al., 2019). Therefore, climate change may also affect the availability of tiger prawn seedlings and the extent of prawn PL collection in the future.
Overfishing has also played an environmentally-damaging role in the Sundarban, both for prawn PL (Mahapatra et al., 1999;Ahamed et al., 2012) and other species that are discarded in the process (Chandra & Sagar, 2003). Future sustainability will depend on managing the overall prawn PL catch within ecologically-sustainable limits in areas that remain free of salinization.
The issue of environmental sustainability highlights the need for policy interventions that promote community management of prawn PL resources. Community management could strengthen the position of fishing women in bargaining relationships with agents who purchase the prawn PL for commercial operations. In addition, community-level organization could improve the financial prospects of prawn PL collectors by reducing their need to borrow from private lenders as their incomes fluctuate with variable catch volumes (Islam &Chuenpagdee, 2013).Such improvements could be realized by community credit programs arranged with financial organizations operating under India's new Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) framework (Note 3).Such programs could also finance safer and more productive techniques for capturing wild prawn PL if they existed, but extensive inquiries in Sundarban by one of the authors have not identified any currently-available options.
Although community management may have significant potential for improving the livelihoods of women who remain in prawn PL collection, it should be recognized that environmental sustainability will impose a natural limit on the future scale of the sector.

5.Conclusions
In light of the research findings, an abbreviated SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis (Humphrey, 2005) can be used to summarize the current status and future prospects of Sundarban women who are engaged in prawn PL collection.
Strengths: Prawn PL collectors have open access to a widely-distributed, high-demand resource at the base of a sustainable value chain that produces significant profits for investors. An additional advantage is offered by self-determined employment hours, which allow time for household responsibilities and other transient employment opportunities that may arise.
Weaknesses: In the current system, prawn PL collection by individual women involves hard labor with a low payoff under hazardous environmental conditions that increase the likelihood of illness from saline immersion and death or injury from crocodile attacks. As such, it operates as an employment of last resort for women whose spatial immobility and low education levels give them few income-earning alternatives. In addition, dependence on prawn PL income, combined with substantial random fluctuations in the prawn PL catch, leads to widespread indebtedness to private credit providers.
Opportunities: Rising levels of education are expanding younger women's opportunities for alternative, higher-payoff employment. The departure of young women from the sector may reduce competition for the older, less-educated women who remain. In addition, the requirements of India's Corporate Social Responsibility statute may reduce women's debt burdens by encouraging the participation of outside financial organizations in community-managed credit systems.
Threats: Two environmental factors may significantly reduce potential earnings in this sector. First, progressive salinization from sea level rise is reducing prawn PL habitat as it advances. Women in the affected areas will ultimately be forced to withdraw from prawn PL collection. Second, individual collection has led to over-exploitation of the natural prawn PL stock, as well as depletion of other aquatic species that are discarded from capture nets. Restoration of ecological balance will require a reduction in the overall scale of collection.
The SWOT analysis provides an abbreviated framework for understanding the tradeoffs faced by Sundarban women who work in prawn PL collection. The results of this study suggest that women are commonly aware of the health risks from prawn PL collection, and engagement in this activity is heavily concentrated among those with low opportunity wages whose time is not preempted by child-care demands. The results also support the women's general view of health risks. Controlling for otherwise-similar occupational choices, individual/household characteristics, and saline water ingestion, the econometric estimates indicate that more years of saline exposure in prawn PL collection entail greater health risks. It should be acknowledged that the ailments analyzed in this paper are self-reported. However, understanding women's beliefs about the association is also important because their risk perception influences decisions about whether and how much to engage in saline-immersive activities.
The research findings highlight education as a major factor in determining women's occupational choices. They also suggest that educational progress will reduce the number of women who collect prawn PL in the coming years. However, many thousands of older, less-educated women will remain engaged for the foreseeable future.
The areas where collection of prawn PL is still prevalent are remote from market centers and offer few alternative occupations for less-educated women. In contrast, women elsewhere in the Sundarban, with better transport facilities and access to markets, have participated in training for home-based work alternatives. Examples include food processing, tailoring, and embroidery, which are taught by organizations such as the West Bengal Joygopalpur Gram Vika Kendra (Roy et al., 2017;Biswas & Ghosh, 2020). More isolated women are not likely to benefit from these options unless more public resources are devoted to improved market access, skills training and subsidized credit.
In conclusion, it should be acknowledged that the findings and policy implications discussed in this paper reflect the specific social, economic and environmental characteristics of Indian's Sundarban region. The paper has direct relevance for prawn PL collection in the Sundarban region of Bangladesh, which operates under similar conditions (Islam & Chuenpagdee, 2013). Although wild prawn PL collection previously played an important role in other Asian countries (e.g., Kungvankij, 1984) on Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines), commercial spawning has supplanted wild collection as development has raised opportunity wages in those economies (Nadarajah & Eide, 2020). For other cases involving occupational choices and environmental health hazards for marginalized people, it is hoped that the methods employed for this research will provide a model for future investigations.