Actor-Based Design of a Management System for the Elephant Marsh Fishery in Malawi

Abstract

In Malawi, fishing community user groups known as beach village committees, traditional chiefs, government officers, and fishers are the key players in fisheries management. Fish catch trends at the Elephant Marsh Fishery in southern Malawi are declining. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article uses an actor-based framework (known as Action-in-Context) to unveil the issues that are crucial in devising a sustainable governance system for the fishery. We establish and propose that the key social variables for the design of a three-pillared (locally based, weak, and amorphous) resilient institution for sustainability of the Elephant Marsh Fishery are (i) the social reputation of the leaders of local fishery institutions (beach village committee leaders), and (ii) the power dynamics between traditional chiefs and these local fishery leaders. We end the article by exploring the implications of the findings on the sustainability of the fishery under rising resource pressure. ARTICLE HISTORY

Land use/land cover dynamics, trade-offs and implications on tropical inland shallow lakes’ ecosystems’ management: Case of Lake Malombe, Malawi

“…Researchers such as Makwinja et al (2014) and Xu et al (2020) pointed out that the decline in fish production is highly linked to the fishery's overdependence. Similar findings have been reported in inland lakes and wetlands in Malawi and tropical regions (Kafumbata et al, 2014;Kosamu et al, 2017;Njiru et al, 2010). The mixed-effect regression results in Table 5 demonstrated a significant (p <0.05) negative relationship between the fishery and cultivated land-class, suggesting that the collapse of the fishery in Figure 4a opened new alternative livelihood opportunities beyond fishing (FISH, 2015).…”

“…In Malawi, landscape transformation has become the emergent trend, particularly in inland tropical shallow lakes driven by rapid population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation (Kosamu et al, 2017;Makwinja et al, 2019;Njaya, 2009). Malawi is ranked as one of the countries in the SADC region experiencing forest loss, with estimates show that about 30,000-40,000 hectares of land are lost annually due to increased agricultural activities and excessive wood and charcoal biomass consumption (Ngwira & Watanabe, 2019;Nkwanda et al, 2021).…”

Palm oil social conflict resolution and mediation in Jambi

“…An actor is an individual or social entity that acts individually or collectively, while the action is a unit of behavior possessed by an actor to make decisions. Every actor has a choice and motivation (Kosamu et al, 2017;Overmars et al, 2007;Presseau et al, 2019). The choice is an action that is considered by an actor related to the goals of the actor.…”

Revisiting the three-pillared design of a management system for the Elephant Marsh Wetland Fishery in Malawi

“…at the fishing community level) at the expense of personal interests, it becomes easier to achieve success in fisheries management. Based on this complexity of motivation to fisheries management success, the issue that motivates this paper is to critically consider how the short to medium term (<20 years) management arrangements proposed by Kosamu et al (2016), could be modified to sustain the fishery at the Elephant Marsh wetland in the long run (> 20 years).…”

“…Based on interviews and participant observation, Kosamu et al (2016), used an actor-based framework (known as Action-in-Context) to propose that within a short to medium term a resilient management institution for the Elephant Marsh Fishery should have three ‗pillar characteristics', namely; (i) a low-cost weak institution built for growth and adaptation; (ii) a purely locally based ‗nested enterprise' and, (iii) an internally amorphous institution. In the following section, this paper will bring in some theory-based reflections on how the ‗three-pillared' design might grow, if need be in the longer future, into a stronger one.…”