British Colonialism, Marine Sciences, and Fisheries Governance: Lessons from Lake Malawi in the Mid-Twentieth Century

European colonisation played a fundamental role in entrenching unequal and state-dominated marine governance regimes across diverse bodies of water, e.g. recent conflicts over Mi'kmaq lobster fishing in Nova Scotia, Maori marine jurisdiction in New Zealand, and pollution of rivers central to Indigenous livelihoods in Peru. The development of environmental marine sciences was intrinsically tied to this process, facilitating the extension of imperial governance into marine spaces. Yet, colonial powers were also forced to recognise the rights of traditional authorities over waterside spaces and fishing grounds. This led to pluralistic fisheries governance, where both colonial governments and traditional authorities exercised rights to control marine spaces. These regimes were underpinned by distinctive ways of knowing and led to different impacts on marine environments. Ongoing recognition of the widespread impact of colonialism and colonial sciences on environments, however, has been predominantly associated with land to the neglect of marine space despite the continuing impact of colonial-originated regimes on marine governance.

Addressing this largely hidden history, this project explores the development of two distinctive fisheries management regimes in Lake Malawi in the mid-twentieth century; one imposed by the British colonial government and the other by Chief Msosa, who implemented a new chief-regulated fishery in Mbenje Island. This provides a unique opportunity to explore the principles and ideologies underpinning these regimes, considering how colonial fisheries management embedded specific values based on dominant 'scientific' principles that neglected and subjugated local knowledge and socio-economic realities in comparison to a chief-regulated fishery grounded in community norms and practices. Today, Mbenje Island is celebrated as a sustainable fishery whereas most fisheries in Lake Malawi, which fall under a national fisheries governance regime with colonial origins, are overexploited.

To engage fishing communities in Malawi and the wider public, the project utilises methods drawn from digital humanities to create a digital storytelling platform that will be hosted on an open access project website. Charting the development of fisheries management regimes in Lake Malawi and Mbenje Island, the platform will provide a visual narrative of these two regimes, contextualising archival documentation, oral history excerpts, environmental sampling data, and laws to compare their practices, principles, and impacts. This includes interactive maps, where data can be explored (e.g. colonial legislation, interview excerpts, species data) at the click of a button. Transcriptions of archival records will be downloadable, providing open and democratised access.

This is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project, combining expertise from academia and the policy / advocacy sector, and from history, marine environmental science, public health, sustainable development, and natural resource management. This is deployed to conduct archival research of colonial records from the mid-twentieth century, oral histories of community members in Chikombe, and environmental sampling of sediment cores in Lake Malawi. The project will be led by researchers from Mzuzu University (Malawi) and the University of Strathclyde (U.K.) in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (Malawi). The project will make a significant contribution to ongoing debates surrounding colonialism, natural resources governance, and climate change, creating an innovative platform that will raise public and policymaker awareness of the impact of colonialism and environmental marine science on community-led fisheries governance over the long-term. These findings will be distilled into practical recommendations to address the legacies of colonial narratives of 'dominant' science in support of sustainable and just use of marine resources.