Sustainable fishing in one of Malawi's biggest wetlands
The Elephant Marsh is one of the biggest wetlands in Malawi and many of the country's inhabitants rely on it for their small-scale fishing catch. To make their small fisheries sustainable and future-proof, the government has to support the fishing community and not impose too many regulations. This is the finding of PhD candidate Ishmael Kosamu.
Ishmael Kosamu divided his time between the Centre for Environmental Sciences (CML) in Leiden, the Netherlands and the University of Malawi, Polytechnic, in Blantyre, Malawi. He teaches students of environmental sciences in Malawi, but this is also the location where he conducted fieldwork for his PhD research. Kosamu studied the sustainability of small fisheries at the Elephant Marsh Wetland in the southern region of Malawi. This is one of the largest wetlands in Malawi: in periods of drought it is around 500 km2, but in the rainy season the wetland extends to a surface area of around 2700 km2.
Many of the region's inhabitants are dependent on the fish catch from the wetland. 'They are mostly traditional fishing households who operate in a small area mainly for local consumption of the fish,' Kosamu explains. But the ecosystem of the wetland is under pressure as a result of climate change, population growth, rural poverty and the conversion of wetland to agricultural land. This affects the fish stocks around the wetland, and consequently the income and livelihoods of the fishermen. 'There is no adequate monitoring or control by the government to maintain this wetland as a natural food resource. For my PhD research I studied what is needed to make sure that these small-scale fisheries are future-proof.'
DJ Cockburn