Assumptions at different levels

 

Assumptions have to be made that condition the success of the enterprise.

Among others, it should be checked that :

	free physical access to sites and data is given to project partners,
	strong partnership with local teams is sought by research counterparts,
	active implication is also desired by, and possible to provincial bodies
	there is no restriction of availability of, and access to satellite imagery and more generally to data for land cover and land use mapping, farming data and local statistics.

Risks and flexibility

 

This project is faced with a number of risks :

	political or administrative risks : weight and inertia,
	structural risks : reduced staff trained for applying new methodologies,
	social risks : too high technicality, i.e. discrepancy between level of comprehension and standards of project designers,
	bad circulation of information between research institutes, provincial fisheries and local farmers
	natural risks : despite many efforts, the Mekong may delta prove unsuitable to sustainable shrimp aquaculture, due to its too versatile behavior (strong temporal variations).

It is the project coordinators’ responsibility, both on the EU and Vietnamese sides, that all these risks be correctly assessed along the project and that relevant steps and actions be taken in order to a) warn the project partners and the EU in due time of possible failure to achieve foreseen goals, b) in all cases minimize their impact through effective project management. 

 

 

During the project, several milestones will be available and verifiable :

	yearly work plan and yearly meeting for progress assessment
	5 intermediate and one final reports
	joint coordination
	initial and final workshops, one “hands-on” case study (mid-project),  publications agenda

After the project, indicators can be found by surveying the state of project’s assets such as data base updates, maps, statistics, reports. At a higher level, monitoring data can be found about production, communities revenue etc...

first to test the hypothesis contained in the project in terms of environmental sustainability of aquaculture; the work to be conducted in the selected sites will tell how hypothesis and methodologies should be adapted to ensure reproducibility;

second to serve, after full evaluation of what has been learned from the pilot work, to develop similar action in other parts of the area and over the long-term. The importance given to the activities for building up the capacity of local and regional institutions to manage adequate information (both in collecting and analysing) is justified by the fact that this is crucial to enhance the efficiency of collective action or public policy design and implementation.

	the fact that environment is in many regards a key asset with respect to aquaculture sustainability, a major recent activity in the delta that contributes to maintain a large population that would otherwise tend to migrate to already overcrowded cities.
	-     the fact that high potential for local income but also for foreign earnings gives aquaculture development a very strong dynamism that tends, for economic and political reasons, to be blind to environmental consequences.

Therefore, if environmental dimensions are not given proper attention, and if awareness of stakeholders is not raised, aquaculture development is most likely to be unsustainable and to contradict with environmental policy objectives.