Scoping study on the development and sustainable utilisation of inland fisheries in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s inland fishery resource endowment has been overlooked as a means of supporting sustainable livelihoods in the democratic era, lacking a guiding policy and legislation aligned with the country’s rightsbased Constitution. The absence of an equitable inland fishing governance framework with defined use rights has resulted in growing unmanaged and unsustainable fishing practices, conflicts between resource users, and the perpetuation of Colonial- and Apartheid-era exclusion of rural communities from livelihood and economic opportunities linked to aquatic natural resources. In response to this problem, the Water Research Commission launched a solicited research project entitled “Baseline And Scoping Study On The Development And Sustainable Utilisation Of Storage Dams For Inland Fisheries And Their Contribution To Rural Livelihoods” to provide a knowledge base to inform the development of policy and institutional arrangements for inland fishery governance. The project was executed by a trans-disciplinary team of researchers with fisheries and social science backgrounds from Rhodes University’s Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science; the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), and the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB).