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

欧洲的殖民在巩固不平等和国家主导的不同水域的海洋治理制度方面发挥了重要作用，例如新斯科舍省最近围绕Mi‘kmaq龙虾捕捞的冲突、新西兰的毛利人海洋管辖权以及秘鲁土著生计核心河流的污染。环境海洋科学的发展与这一进程有着内在的联系，促进了帝国统治向海洋空间的延伸。然而，殖民列强也被迫承认传统当局对水域和渔场的权利。这导致了多元化的渔业治理，殖民地政府和传统当局都行使了控制海洋空间的权利。这些制度以独特的认识方式为基础，并对海洋环境产生了不同的影响。然而，对殖民主义和殖民科学对环境的广泛影响的持续认识主要与陆地有关，忽视了海洋空间，尽管起源于殖民的政权对海洋治理的持续影响。该项目探讨了20世纪中期马拉维湖两种独特的渔业管理制度的发展，一种是英国殖民政府强加的，另一种是由Msosa酋长实施的，他在姆本杰岛实施了新的酋长管制渔业。这为探索这些制度的原则和意识形态提供了一个独特的机会，考虑到殖民地渔业管理如何基于主导的“科学”原则嵌入特定的价值观，与以社区规范和做法为基础的主管管制渔业相比，这些原则忽视和征服了当地的知识和社会经济现实。今天，姆本杰岛被誉为可持续渔业，而马拉维湖的大多数渔业都被过度开发，这些渔业属于国家渔业治理制度，起源于殖民地。为了让马拉维的渔业社区和更广泛的公众参与进来，该项目利用数字人文学科的方法创建了一个数字讲故事平台，将托管在一个开放获取项目的网站上。该平台将绘制马拉维湖和姆本杰岛渔业管理制度发展的图表，提供这两个制度的视觉叙述，结合档案文件、口述历史摘录、环境采样数据和法律，比较它们的做法、原则和影响。这包括交互式地图，只需按一下按钮即可浏览数据(例如殖民立法、访谈摘录、物种数据)。这是一个跨学科和协作的项目，结合了学术界和政策/宣传部门以及历史、海洋环境科学、公共卫生、可持续发展和自然资源管理的专门知识。它被用于对二十世纪中叶的殖民记录进行档案研究，奇孔贝社区成员的口述历史，以及马拉维湖沉积物岩心的环境采样。该项目将由来自马拉维Mzuzu大学和英国Strathclyde大学的研究人员领导。与环境政策和宣传中心(马拉维)合作。该项目将对围绕殖民主义、自然资源治理和气候变化正在进行的辩论做出重大贡献，创建一个创新平台，提高公众和政策制定者对殖民主义和环境海洋科学对社区主导的长期渔业治理的影响的认识。这些发现将被提炼成实用的建议，以解决支持可持续和公正地利用海洋资源的殖民叙事的“主导”科学的遗产。

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.