A major factor in developing community resilience is the quality of human capital.
Human capital takes several forms such as length of experience in a particular activity, working age, education background, and their past experience (Milgram, 1990). This postulate has been strengthened by Klein (2007); Tang and Musa (2011).
Disaster forces people to adapt and be creative by changing their behaviour and habits. Data on human capital used in Chart 8.1 is drawn predominantly from chapter five, but also chapter six due to its close relationship with social capital. According to Chart 8.1, there is little difference between the two areas in regard to human capital.
In terms of experience, both areas surveyed show a similar trend. The majority of the shrimp farm owner had been involved in the shrimp industry for more than ten years, whereas the supervisor group was more evenly distributed across the different levels of experience. The majority of workers had five years or less experience in the shrimp sector. In addition the vast majority of the members of the surveyed Sidoarjo shrimp farmer households were of a productive and working age.
I have already provided a number of examples of increasing human capital (see Table 6.17).
Table 6.17 Changes to Human Capital before and after the Mud Volcano
165 Before the mud volcano After the mud volcano Control group The farmers just conduct
their daily routine irrigation in filtering river water.
Target group The farmer could add to or change the water in their
Dispersed across groups Had adequate earning from shrimp ponds and
73 Tretes and Trawas well known as places for leisure and holidays in East Java
74 “… dulu kita pergi ke Tretes atau Trawas sebulan bisa dua atau tiga kali, Lha sekarang boro boro sebulan sekali, dua bulan sekali saja tidak kesampaian”
166 6.5. Discussion
Livelihoods based around shrimp pond aquaculture are determined by a range of social, ecological, economic and institutional factors. Distress, pressures, shocks and hazards threaten livelihoods both immediately and over time (Cannon, Twigg, &
Rowell, 2003; Douglas Paton, 2001 ; Oliver–Smith, 2004; Smit & Wandel, 2006;
Turner, 2004). Livelihood vulnerability is a depressing state (Adger, Benjaminsen, Brown, & Svarstad, 2001), which has external and internal dimensions. The external dimensions include the environmental hazard and policies changes whereas the internal dimension include the human resources quality and their preparedness in anticipating the damaging loss.
As depicted at Chart 6.1, the target group has two advantages compared to the control group in the categories of human and social assets. Chart 6.1 assists to identify the different assets possessed by quantifying the asset, making comparisons between assets, and creating a quantifiable indicator of assets in order to seek sequencing or substitution between assets.
Most shrimp farmers in developing countries, especially small-scale operators face many challenges. They have to deal with the lack of access to good quality feed and seed; limited access to transportation services; high-risk of disease; difficulty in fulfilling market needs, such as food safety standards, traceability and certification;
and limited access to markets and fluctuating shrimp prices.
The survey and observation revealed several changes in the livelihood of Sidoarjo shrimp farmers. The degree of significance of the change varies among the target and control groups.
There are at least three livelihood transformation identifiers due to the occurrence of the mud volcano in Porong. First, the changes of ponds as financial assets and environmental assets. Sub section 6.1.1 shows that the target group had a greater percentage of larger ponds. However, the ponds that are part of the control group tend to have a higher value. These contradictive findings show that the mud volcano created uncertainty in pond price appraisals. Furthermore, in some instances, the mud
167 volcano also influenced the productivity of the farmers causing the farmers’ annual income to decrease.
An extreme livelihood transformation has been found in Jabon sub district. Due to the pond productivity reducing gradually, the pond owners changed their ponds to sand mining sites. This phenomenon has been found in an area along the road running parallel with the Porong river bank. The reason behind those changes was that sand mining is more profitable where fish and shrimp cultivation was not. This is because sand mining in the area does not use manual man power that costs a lot of money, rather they use a high pressure pump that is able to suck sand from the bottom of the pond cheaply. The second reason is that the pond location is easily accessed by the large trucks that transport the sand. However, in other places, shrimp farmers still utilise their ponds as fisheries.
Possessing ponds, besides functioning as a place for production activities (physical asset), can also be used as collateral for a loan or having a bank loan (financial asset) and increase the owner’s social status (social asset). Pond ownership functions as a social asset in three ways. First the amount of ponds owned increase the social status of shrimp pond owners. This is because when the farmer in harvest time, if they make a substantial profit, they tend to give alms75 to religious organisations such for the mosque and donations are announced during worship, creating community respect for the donor.
Second, by possessing ponds, there is an ability to develop a good relationship with the community. The good practices that have been found for this case is the existing local wisdom that allows people to stay near the pond for scavenging low grade commodities in the shrimp pond (as described in 6.1.4). This creates togetherness among the owner and the community who live in close proximity to the shrimp ponds. As result of these social advantages, the shrimp farmer can refine their
75 Most of shrimp ponds’ respondents are Moslem. In Islam, values have been taught that the more income that has been earned the more social responsibility is embedded, therefore annually every Moslem has to donate a portion of their income for Zakat, sodaqoh, and infaq (religious charity) besides paying tax.
168 livelihood strategies, in particular in adopting polyculture, which has increased the income of the target group, even though they have less access to loans (Yahya, 2007). The more a shrimp farmer is acknowledged as a generous person, the more easily the farmer gains help from the community. In the case of adopting polyculture, which requires intense labour in planting mangrove and creating other pond instruments, the shrimp pond owners are able to employ with backward salary.
Changes to the shrimp farmers’ livelihood, especially when they apply polyculture, show that the target group who apply polyculture is larger than the control group.
There are 68 farmers in Kupang village cultivating shrimp, milk fish and seaweed in their pond, while no farmers in other subdistricts advised that they cultivate seaweed.
Third, the capital exchange across local communities and shrimp pond owners can be seen from the involvement of the community who reside around the pond for pond maintenance jobs. For this model, there were two capitals that were exchangeable:
financial capital (source of income) and labour demand. The shrimp pond owner provides jobs (has labour demand) in maintaining the pond and for the community this is the source of income. An example of a pond maintenance job that involves the community is planting the mangrove. In addition, while employing the community for planting mangrove, the pond owner is also able to educate and develop community awareness of the importance of mangroves to their region. The advantages of engaging the local community is that the community has empathy and concern for environmental conservation. Therefore, they will be more ready to participate in environment conservation activities. This includes creating an independent mangrove watchdog. The objective of having an independent mangrove watchdog is to control illegal mangrove logging. The community that has become involved with the issues of conservation of industry, environment and income has the courage to maintain a watch upon the mangroves. In addition, the involvement of the community against the illegal mangrove logging also has as a goal to reduce the number of community members who may have been tempted to commit theft and illegal harvesting of mangroves.
The transformations, especially in shrimp farmers’ socio-economic behaviour, have been influenced by five factors; (i) social capital especially the organisational
169 structure of the aquaculture industry, (ii), a combination between physical capital and social capital that is represented by residential arrangement and work practices, (iii) financial aspects, (iv) the quality of human capital, especially about the awareness to the hazard and the effects of the mud to the production, and (v) the degree of environmental assets access and asset vulnerability identified through the degree of pollution of water river.