- Expert in fisheries governance, livelihoods, fish value chain and clinate change resilienceedit
Research Interests: Business, Environmental Science, Mozambique, Conflict Resolution, Community Participation, and 12 moreMalawi, Dispute Settlement, Ecosystems, Fishery Management, Fishery, Fishing Rights, Document, Ecosystem, Transboundary Water Management, Co management, Fishery Resources Management, and Shared water resources
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... DPhil thesis, University of Zimbabwe. MVULA, P, 2002. ... Experiences with fisheries co-management in South East Asia and Bangladesh. In Wilson, DC, Nielsen, JR & Degnbol, P (Eds), The fisheries co-management experience:... more
... DPhil thesis, University of Zimbabwe. MVULA, P, 2002. ... Experiences with fisheries co-management in South East Asia and Bangladesh. In Wilson, DC, Nielsen, JR & Degnbol, P (Eds), The fisheries co-management experience: accomplishments, challenges and prospects. ...
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Summary This paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs (co-management) in sub-Saharan Africa. Partly challenging the current narrative, but in line with experience in other sectors (e.g., forestry), the... more
Summary This paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs (co-management) in sub-Saharan Africa. Partly challenging the current narrative, but in line with experience in other sectors (e.g., forestry), the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive. In most cases, fisheries co-management failed to improve governance, but simply altered the distribution
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ABSTRACT Most countries in Africa have promoted some form of decentralized fisheries management either as discrete co-management projects or as a component of broader decentralization processes that cut across other sectors. These... more
ABSTRACT Most countries in Africa have promoted some form of decentralized fisheries management either as discrete co-management projects or as a component of broader decentralization processes that cut across other sectors. These initiatives were shaped by an international policy narrative that emphasises participation in decision making and development. A review of fisheries decentralization experiences in Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Malawi reveals marked differences in purpose, strategy, and performance. In general, co-management projects are limited by their ability to scale up new practice and to maintain viable and representative management institutions. In other cases, the decentralization process is not well supported politically or locally or does not articulate with fisheries policy. Experiences of decentralization in other sectors provide useful lessons. Acknowledging the informal institutional environment or realpolitikof fisheries and the rural economy could provide opportunities to better manage and review the process of decentralization.
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Research Interests: Geography, Commons, Fisheries, Natural Resource Management, Mozambique, and 15 moreSouthern Africa, Environmental Planning, Community Participation, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Environmental Resource Management, Legislation, Fishery Management, Community based conservation, Fishing Rights, Natural Resource, Lake Kariba, Transboundary Fisheries, and Shared water resources
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ABSTRACT Migratory fishing is widely practiced in water bodies of Malawi. Fishers follow geographic changes in the availability of good catches or move away from areas or water bodies where stocks have been depleted to unprofitable... more
ABSTRACT Migratory fishing is widely practiced in water bodies of Malawi. Fishers follow geographic changes in the availability of good catches or move away from areas or water bodies where stocks have been depleted to unprofitable levels. They also move due to seasonal ecological changes that make it impossible to operate certain gears or due to seasonal decline of catches to unprofitable levels. There are also instances whereby groups of fishers migrated permanently from less productive areas to more productive areas, for example, the aTonga fishers who moved into the central and southern areas of Lake Malawi from Nkhata Bay in the last century. Thus, these types of fishing migrations can be characterized as permanent, temporary seasonal routine or temporary incidental. The cultural dynamics of migrant fishers vary in that some groups maintain their ethnic practices in their new homes when they migrate permanently, while others integrate into the local communities. Temporary migrants have generally been seen as problematic by the receiving local communities due to the social dissonance, in particular adultery and sexual affairs with school girls, that most bring about since they do not bring their spouses and families with them. Although co-management, implemented in Malawi from the 1990s, was supposed to institute limited access and thus curtail migrant fishing, the structural characteristics of small-scale fisheries and reciprocal migration make it impossible to limit access. The best that local controls resulting from co-management can do has been to try to channel formal reporting by migrant fishers of their presence in an area from local chiefs to Beach Village Committees.
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Co-management initiatives were launched on Lakes Malombe and Chiuta in 1993 and 1995, respectively. The contrasting outcomes of the regimes so far provide some important lessons about the introduction of co-management arrangements in... more
Co-management initiatives were launched on Lakes Malombe and Chiuta in 1993 and 1995, respectively. The contrasting outcomes of the regimes so far provide some important lessons about the introduction of co-management arrangements in Malawi. One of the critical aspects is the tension that is created around two organizational aspects. The first concerns the struggle for authority and power between the (supposedly) democratically elected management bodies such as beach village committees (BVCs) and the existing ...
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In 2011 the FAO Committee on Fisheries tasked FAO with the development of an international instrument in the form of guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries (SSF Guidelines). The SSF Guidelines will facilitate the... more
In 2011 the FAO Committee on Fisheries tasked FAO with the development of an international instrument in the form of guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries (SSF Guidelines). The SSF Guidelines will facilitate the empowerment and mobilization of stakeholders to promote change towards sustainable small-scale fisheries and hence facilitate the realisation of the sector’s potential to contribute to poverty alleviation, food and nutrition security, and economic growth. This process needs strong catalysts and follow-up to stimulate lasting and efficient change and there is a need to build bridges between different stakeholder visions, within the fisheries sector as well as outside, to ensure coherence and build political will. The session discussed modalities of engagement of different stakeholders to facilitate the future implementation of the SSF Guidelines, in particular with regard to information and research, capacity development, institutional arrangements and inc...
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Inland freshwater shallow lake ecosystem degradation is indistinctly intertwined with human-induced factors and climate variability. Changes in climate and human-induced factors significantly influence the state of lake ecosystems. This... more
Inland freshwater shallow lake ecosystem degradation is indistinctly intertwined with human-induced factors and climate variability. Changes in climate and human-induced factors significantly influence the state of lake ecosystems. This study provides evidence of the driver, pressure, state, impact, and response (DPSIR) indicators for freshwater lake ecosystem dynamics, taking Lake Malombe in Malawi as a case study. We used the DPSIR framework and Tobit model to achieve the study’s objectives. The study’s findings indicate that top-down processes gradually erode Lake Malombe’s ecosystem state. The lake resilience is falling away from its natural state due to increasing rates of drivers, pressures, and impacts, indicating the lake ecosystem’s deterioration. The study shows that demographic, socio–economic, climatic drivers, pressures, state, and responses significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the lake ecosystem’s resilience. The study suggests that substantial freshwater ecosystem m...
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Summary This paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs (co-management) in sub-Saharan Africa. Partly challenging the current narrative, but in line with experience in other sectors (e.g., forestry), the... more
Summary This paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs (co-management) in sub-Saharan Africa. Partly challenging the current narrative, but in line with experience in other sectors (e.g., forestry), the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive. In most cases, fisheries co-management failed to improve governance, but simply altered the distribution
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This paper examines what may happen when the internationally renowned Malawi principles for ecosystem-based fisheries management are implemented in real-life situations. To explore this, an ecosystem-based fisheries management plan for... more
This paper examines what may happen when the internationally renowned Malawi principles for ecosystem-based fisheries management are implemented in real-life situations. To explore this, an ecosystem-based fisheries management plan for the southern part of the Lake Malawi is used as a case study. However, the lessons learned are relevant for the global implementation of these principles. Drawing on ‘interactive governance theory’, we argue that implementation involves all three ‘governance-orders’, (1) where the governance principles are formulated, (2) where the institutions are designed to operationalise and implement these principles, and (3) where implementation and enforcement actually take place and become routine operation. The Malawi principles must be institutionalised and, subsequently, find their concretisation in the way the southern Lake Malawi ecosystem is actually managed by, and according to, the Malawi Principles and the institutions of which management is a functio...
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This Policy Brief is based on synthetic studies undertaken by participants in the Cross Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa (CROSCOG) project between 2007 and 2009, funded by the European Commission (European Commission:... more
This Policy Brief is based on synthetic studies undertaken by participants in the Cross Sectoral Commons Governance in Southern Africa (CROSCOG) project between 2007 and 2009, funded by the European Commission (European Commission: FP6-2002-INCO-DEV/SSA-1, contract no. 043982). The objective of the project was to share existing research and experience in the governance of large-scale natural resource commons across various ecosystem types in southern Africa.
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Lake Malombe is endowed with a variety of ecosystem services (ES) that have a considerable economic value. This study used, a combination of market-based and value transfer techniques to evaluate the lake ES. The results showed that the... more
Lake Malombe is endowed with a variety of ecosystem services (ES) that have a considerable economic value. This study used, a combination of market-based and value transfer techniques to evaluate the lake ES. The results showed that the annual economic value of Lake Malombe ES is estimated at US$ 40.68million, equivalent to US$635.63/hh/yr. The ecosystem provisioning service (EPS) is ranked the highest (87.45%) in terms of contribution, followed by biodiversity (8.64%), flood regulation (3.70%) then carbon sequestration, culture, and aesthetic services. The ES quality index ranks culture and aesthetic services as the lowest suggesting that investment in the tourism industry in Lake Malombe is not much advanced. Although this study did not take into account all ES components such as non-use values and other regulatory services, the estimated total annual ES value of US$ 40.68million derived from Lake Malombe provides a strong basis for a need to design an economic incentive model to ...
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Community-based conservation (CBC) is a prominent feature of conservation and development policy and practice in southern Africa. It is a generic concept defining different configurations of controlling access to and use of land and... more
Community-based conservation (CBC) is a prominent feature of conservation and development policy and practice in southern Africa. It is a generic concept defining different configurations of controlling access to and use of land and natural resources in southern Africa – and has led to the development of policies and legislation in support of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) and co-management arrangements. Both concepts largely revolve around the premise of devolution of control and management authority over natural resources to facilitate conservation and use of, and local access to, resources. A focus on regional economic integration has offered an opportunity for extending the experiences of CBNRM and comanagement to resources occurring along international boundaries. Different trans-boundary natural resources management (TBNRM) programmes have been initiated in southern Africa. The experience of two inshore fisheries on Lakes Chiuta and Kariba highlights the ...
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Migratory fishing is widely practiced in water bodies of Malawi. Fishers follow geographic changes in the availability of good catches or move away from areas or water bodies where stocks have been depleted to unprofitable levels. They... more
Migratory fishing is widely practiced in water bodies of Malawi. Fishers follow geographic changes in the availability of good catches or move away from areas or water bodies where stocks have been depleted to unprofitable levels. They also move due to seasonal ecological changes that make it impossible to operate certain gears or due to seasonal decline of catches to unprofitable levels. There are also instances whereby groups of fishers migrated permanently from less productive areas to more productive areas, for example, the aTonga fishers who moved into the central and southern areas of Lake Malawi from Nkhata Bay in the last century. Thus, these types of fishing migrations can be characterized as permanent, temporary seasonal routine or temporary incidental. The cultural dynamics of migrant fishers vary in that some groups maintain their ethnic practices in their new homes when they migrate permanently, while others integrate into the local communities. Temporary migrants have ...
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Center for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)
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Aquaculture has long been recognized as a potential avenue for building a strong Tanzanian economy and for improving the quality of life of coastal Tanzaniani by increasing employment, household incomes and food security. Coastal regions... more
Aquaculture has long been recognized as a potential avenue for building a strong Tanzanian economy and for improving the quality of life of coastal Tanzaniani by increasing employment, household incomes and food security. Coastal regions in Tanzania ate ...
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This paper presents key lessons from development of a transboundary fisheries comanagement (TBFC) on Lake Chiuta, shared between Malawi and Mozambique. Since the mid-1990s when fisheries co-management was introduced on the Malawian side... more
This paper presents key lessons from development of a transboundary fisheries comanagement (TBFC) on Lake Chiuta, shared between Malawi and Mozambique. Since the mid-1990s when fisheries co-management was introduced on the Malawian side of the lake, there had been conflicts between fishing communities from both countries. The conflicts mainly centered on management system and fishing rules. Fishing co-management was introduced on the Malawian side in 1995 which led to formation of Beach Village Committees (BVCs) to represent interests of the fishing community while traditional leaders advanced fishing rules on the Mozambican side. The Malawian BVCs banned use of seines to sustain the fishery while the Mozambican traditional leaders allowed seine fishers. To address the conflicts a TBFC arrangement was proposed by fisheries authorities from both sides in 2003. This study shows that the TBFC has gone through three phases including fieldbased coordination and collaboration (Phase I); s...
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Fish resource management system in Malawi has undergone several changes for nearly a century. The conventional centralised fisheries management system was introduced after the colonial rule through a mandated Fisheries Department, taking... more
Fish resource management system in Malawi has undergone several changes for nearly a century. The conventional centralised fisheries management system was introduced after the colonial rule through a mandated Fisheries Department, taking over the whole responsibility of controlling exploitation of fisheries resources from the traditional powers. The major focus at that time was on fisheries development whereby technologies on fishing methods, fishing gears and craft were being introduced to exploit the fisheries resources. However, by late 1980s, fish catches of commercial Oreochromis spp. in Lake Malombe began to decline. This was due to a number of factors such as the uncontrolled increase in fishing effort, environmental degradation and limited capacity of the Fisheries Department to enforce regulations. Consequently, the declining catch levels of Oreochromis spp. in Lake Malombe necessitated a refocus of the fisheries management system in order to facilitate recovery of the coll...
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Globally, our knowledge on lake fisheries is still limited despite their importance to food security and livelihoods. Here we show that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes, by analyzing... more
Globally, our knowledge on lake fisheries is still limited despite their importance to food security and livelihoods. Here we show that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes, by analyzing time-series data (1970–2014) for 31 lakes across five continents. We find that effects of a climate or land-use driver (e.g., air temperature) on lake environment could be relatively consistent in directions, but consequential changes in a lake-environmental factor (e.g., water temperature) could result in either increases or decreases in fish catch in a given lake. A subsequent correlation analysis indicates that reductions in fish catch was less likely to occur in response to potential climate and land-use changes if a lake is located in a region with greater access to clean water. This finding suggests that adequate investments for water-quality protection and water-use efficiency can provide additional benefits to lake fisheries and food security.