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This paper analyzes productive “self-help” efforts by Lake Chiuta fishers to protect their lake from over-fishing and, far more innovative in the opinion of this author, central Government of Malawi (GOM) officials’ willingness to (a) recognize the positive nature of fishers’ renewed attempts at self governance, (b) build on the local institutional capital that those same fishers were constructing at the end of the last century, and support those local institutional arrangements in very creative ways that not only authorized fishers to make, monitor and enforce rules on fisheries governance and management, but simultaneously freed the GOM of two burdens (effective monitoring and enforcement) which clearly exceeded its capacity, while continuing to provide essential minimum backup support (targeted dissemination of information about relevant new national legislation on fisher empowerment, occasional dispute resolution services, and minimal oversight – checks and balances – concerning fishers’ rules for resource governance and management (RGM). These events demonstrated, as well, fishers’ sense of rule of law concepts. |
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