Bland, Simon, and Steven J Donda. 1995. "Common Property and Poverty: Fisheries Co-management in Malawi." Presented at "Reinventing the Commons," the fifth Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bodoe, Norway, May 24-28, 1995.

Abstract

"Malawi's economy is fragile, dominated mainly by the production end export of agricultural products. National development policy concentrates on growth through poverty alleviation and the fisheries sector has a key role to play through the provision of rural employment and, more importantly, through its contribution to household food security. Per capita consumption of fish in Malawi as declining as the population grows at a rate of 3.3% per annum, pressures on natural resources are high end have led to severe environmental degradation and the potential for increased fish production is limited. The problems of chronically low incomes amongst many of the world's fishermen has received much attention. Poverty alleviation among fisher folk is a common, though often elusive, policy objective. One of the reasons for this is the general lack of understanding of the features and factor of this poverty and without such an understanding any policy is unlikely to achieve the desired results. A large body of work suggests that another reason for this persistent chronic poverty is attributed to the common property nature of capture fisheries and the associated dissipation of resource rent.

"Resource rent dissipation does not, in itself cause poverty but as an employer of last resort with low entry barriers and relatively high exit barriers the fisheries sector concentrates individuals with low opportunity costs. This low opportunity cost is a contributory factor as is the disequilibrium of opportunity cost due to physical and emotional immobility of the workforce. The only available method for increasing incomes thus seems to be increasing the opportunity costs by developing alternative employment opportunities.

"The sector has reached a critical point in the development process where emphasis is changing from one of technology led production increases to the establishment of sustainable resource utilization. Effective resource management must involve the fishing communities in efforts to limit access, and these changes must occur in parallel with the development of alternative, non-primary productive, income earning opportunities for lakeshore communities to raise opportunity costs end broaden the economic base. Such an approach offers the only solution, not only to common property resource management in Malawi, but more generally to halting and reversing the downward development spiral."