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

欧洲殖民在巩固不同水域的不平等和国家主导的海洋治理制度方面发挥了根本作用，例如，最近新斯科舍省Mi'kmaq龙虾捕捞的冲突，新西兰毛利人的海洋管辖权，以及秘鲁土著居民生计的核心河流污染。环境海洋科学的发展与这一过程有着内在的联系，促进了帝国治理向海洋空间的扩展。然而，殖民大国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，并导致对海洋环境的不同影响。然而，目前对殖民主义和殖民科学对环境的广泛影响的认识主要与陆地有关，而忽视了海洋空间，尽管殖民起源的制度对海洋治理仍有持续的影响。为了解决这段很大程度上被隐藏的历史，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，另一种是姆索萨酋长强加的，他在姆本杰岛实行了一种新的由酋长管理的渔业。这为探索支撑这些政权的原则和意识形态提供了一个独特的机会，考虑到与基于社区规范和实践的主要监管渔业相比，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，这些原则忽视和征服了当地知识和社会经济现实。今天，姆本杰岛以可持续渔业而闻名，而马拉维湖的大多数渔业属于具有殖民起源的国家渔业治理制度，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科的方法创建了一个数字讲故事平台，该平台将放在一个开放获取的项目网站上。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，提供这两种制度的视觉叙述，将档案文件、口述历史摘录、环境采样数据和法律结合起来，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（例如殖民立法，采访摘录，物种数据）。档案记录的抄本将可下载，提供开放和民主化的访问。这是一个跨学科的合作项目，结合了学术界和政策/倡导部门以及历史、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。它被用于对20世纪中期的殖民记录、奇孔比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进行档案研究。该项目将由Mzuzu大学（马拉维）和斯特拉斯克莱德大学（英国）的研究人员与环境政策和倡导中心（马拉维）合作领导。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，创建一个创新平台，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。这些发现将被提炼成实用的建议，以解决“主导”科学的殖民叙事遗留问题，以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.