Fisheries Co-management and its benefits: The Case of Small-scale Fisheries in Malawi

Fisheries management is more of human management than fish management. This is evidenced by the many fishing regulation that are developed world-wide and imposed on the fishers who harvest the fish resources. A number of fisheries management regimes have been devised and implemented to sustainably manage the world fisheries but with varied success levels. The small scale fisheries have not been exceptional in these management regime designs. The coming in of resource user participation in fisheries management or co-management have in some cases promoted sustainable utilisation of resources and fishing communities have claimed tangible benefits in their fishing activities. However, research in Malawi has shown that successful co-management implementation has its basis in the network theory. The network theory builds its explanations from patterns of relations and interactions, and it assumes man to be a social being. The Malawi study considered the basic unit in a network as being the single human being and described as an actor. An actor can also be a group of people, a department, organisation or indeed an entire community. This paper looks at the implementation of fisheries co-management in smallscale fisheries in Malawi, the benefits the fishers gain and how the network theory helps to understand and aid the successful implementation of co-management.