Lake Malawi’s fish stocks are declining, but one community stands apart: around Mbenje Island, a traditional fisheries management plan has ensured thriving fish populations for generations, Mongabay contributor Charles Mpaka reports.
Landlocked Malawi is highly dependent on the lake, which supplies 90% of the country’s fish catch; more than 1.6 million people rely directly or indirectly on the lake for employment.
The lake is home to roughly 1,000 fish species. However, fish stocks have been decreasing with population growth, climate change and habitat degradation. One exception to the decline is near Mbenje Island in the southern part of the lake, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from shore. There are no permanent settlements on the island, which is only inhabited during the fishing season, Mpaka writes.
To help improve fish stocks in the lake as a whole, the government is looking at the local fishing community’s fisheries management plan, in place since the 1950s.
The Mbenje Island Management Committee is led by Senior Chief Makanjira, a highly respected traditional leader. His grandfather, also named Senior Chief Makanjira, led the community to establish fisheries guidelines in the 1950s, when migrant commercial fishers first requested to fish from the island.
To ensure the protection of fish stocks, the 1950s Senior Chief Makanjira instituted a four-month fishing ban from December to March, two months longer than the government-mandated close season.
“It was also because the chief cared about fishers’ safety,” committee member Rabson Chipangula tells Mpaka. “As rainy season starts in December, these islands experience fierce lightning and thunderstorms.”
Since then, annual fisheries surveys have shown abundant fish stocks around the island compared to other parts of Lake Malawi.
Fisheries scientist Elias Chirwa said the community-implemented extended fishing ban and strict enforcement of net mesh size allows the fish to grow larger and populations to increase, as large female fish are more fertile than smaller ones.
“A larger female fish has a larger body cavity that allows the development of larger ovaries with more eggs in them,” Chirwa tells Mpaka.
The success of Mbenje Island lies in the community’s ability to combine fisheries management with Indigenous beliefs and traditional values, including reverence for ancestral spirits and taboos against drinking and smoking on the island.
“The commitment that this community has shown and provided over time gave the department an impetus to adopt a community-based fisheries management,” Maxon Ngochera, senior deputy director of the fisheries department, tells Mpaka.
David Wilson, a researcher who led the “Lessons from Lake Malawi” project to study the community-driven initiative, says it’s important to not just replicate the specific rules of Mbenje, “as this would really be a technical fix and would ignore diverse and distinctive cultural, environmental, political, and social contexts throughout lake fishing communities.”
“This long-term success has only been possible through strong leadership, strict and sustained enforcement and effective communication,” he says.
Read the full story here.
Banner image of Mbenje Island by Charles Mpaka for Mongabay.
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