Managing inequality: the political ecology of a small-scale fishery, Mweru-Luapula, Zambia

Abstract

This paper starts from the perspective that resource management approaches are based upon a body of environmental knowledge. By analysing fisheries management in Mweru-Luapula, Zambia, I argue that this body of environmental knowledge has 1) remained largely unchanged throughout the recent shift to co-management and 2) is to a great extent based upon general paradigmatic conventions with regard to common property regimes. The article outlines the historical trajectories of both resource management and the political ecology of Mweru-Luapula's fishing economy. Using a relational perspective – by looking at interaction of the local fishing economy with external developments, but also by examining socioeconomic relations between individual actors – this article exposes constraints and incentives within the local fishing economy that are not absorbed in the current co-management regime. These findings challenge both policy goals and community-based resource management itself. I argue that governance of small-scale fisheries – in order to close the gap between locally based understandings, policy and legislation – should always be built upon all dimensions (social, economic, ecological, and political) that define a fisheries system.Keywords: co-management, common-property resource management, political ecology, Mweru-Luapula fishery, Zambia.

Abiotic Stress Response in Brachypodium

“…In Brachypodium, Verelst showed that drought stress mainly affects the final cell size, not the cell number (6% of reduction of the cell number vs. 35% of the decrease in the cell size). Thus, cell extension is affected by drought, while cell proliferation is not, which is in sharp disparity to previous annotations made in other plant species such as barley, maize, rice, wheat, and Arabidopsis suggesting that Brachypodium possesses mechanisms to defend its dividing cells against the negative impact of drought stress [5]. In addition, the natural genetic variation revealed that Brachypodium deals with drought stress through the combination of natural selection on standing intra-population genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity [6].…”

Socializing the rain: human adaptation to ecological variability in a fishery, Mweru-Luapula, Zambia

“…Research that is unbiased by Hardin's Malthusian paradigm often leads to insights, such as the capacity of inland fisheries to absorb under-capitalized economic migrants without overwhelming the ecological system (Brox 1990;McCay and Acheson 1987). This process is evident in Mweru-Luapula (Annear 2009;Gordon 2005;Verelst 2013). During 1980s migration into the region, fishers initiated a thriving freshwater sardines commercial fishery (Gordon 2005;Scullion 1985;Zwieten et al 1996).…”

The practice of everyday oystering: aquaculture as resistance

“…The same is true of work that aims to describe power in co-managed fisheries, where there are persistent concerns about knowledge integration, social class formation, and disempowerment of small-scale fishermen (Davis and Ruddle 2012;Quimby and Levine 2018). The inclusion or absence of local SES knowledge in fisheries decision-making is also influenced by power relationships (Campling et al 2012;Jentoft 2017;Verelst 2013). In this article, we take a different look at power and fisheries privatization.…”