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

欧洲殖民化在不同水体中巩固不平等和国家主导的海洋治理制度方面发挥了重要作用，例如最近在新斯科舍省发生的关于米克马克龙虾捕捞的冲突，新西兰的毛利海洋管辖权，以及秘鲁对土著生计至关重要的河流污染。海洋环境科学的发展与这一进程有着内在的联系，有助于将帝国治理扩展到海洋空间。然而，殖民列强也被迫承认传统当局对水边空间和渔场的权利。这导致了多元化的渔业管理，殖民政府和传统当局都行使控制海洋空间的权利。这些制度以独特的认识方式为基础，对海洋环境产生不同的影响。然而，人们目前认识到殖民主义和殖民科学对环境的广泛影响，但主要是与陆地有关，而忽视海洋空间，尽管源于殖民的制度对海洋治理的影响持续存在，本项目探讨这一基本上被隐藏的历史，探讨世纪中期马拉维湖两种不同渔业管理制度的发展情况;一个是英国殖民政府强加的，另一个是姆索萨酋长强加的，他在姆本杰岛实施了一种新的酋长管制渔业。这提供了一个独特的机会，探讨这些制度的原则和意识形态的基础上，考虑如何殖民地渔业管理嵌入基于占主导地位的“科学”原则，忽视和征服当地知识和社会经济现实的具体价值观相比，基于社区规范和做法的酋长管制渔业。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属于殖民时期的国家渔业管理制度，被过度开发。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的方法创建一个数字讲故事平台，该平台将托管在开放获取项目网站上。该平台绘制了马拉维湖和姆本杰岛渔业管理制度的发展，将提供这两个制度的视觉叙述，将档案文件、口述历史摘录、环境抽样数据和法律置于背景中，以比较它们的做法、原则和影响。这包括交互式地图，点击一个按钮就可以探索数据（例如殖民地立法，采访摘录，物种数据）。这是一个跨学科的合作项目，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方面的专业知识。这是用来对世纪中期的殖民记录、Chikombe社区成员的口述历史以及马拉维湖沉积物岩心的环境取样进行档案研究。该项目将由姆祖祖大学（马拉维）和斯特拉斯克莱德大学（英国）的研究人员领导。与环境政策和宣传中心（马拉维）合作。该项目将为围绕殖民主义、自然资源治理和气候变化的持续辩论做出重大贡献，创造一个创新平台，提高公众和决策者对殖民主义和环境海洋科学对社区主导的渔业治理的长期影响的认识。这些研究结果将被提炼成切实可行的建议，以解决殖民地对“主导”科学的叙述遗留下来的问题，支持可持续和公正地利用海洋资源。

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.