Journey to Sustainable Fisheries Management: Organizational and Institutional Limitations in Fisheries Co-management, the Case of Lakes Malombe and Chiuta in Malawi

Fisheries resource management in Malawi, has so far gone through three types of management systems which\ud can effectively be defined, if not more. In the pre-colonial era, fisheries resource management was under the control of\ud traditional leaders, which fall under the Community Based Natural Resource Management System. Thereafter, up to this\ud day, most fishery resources in Malawi are entirely controlled by the government, under the Centralised Fishery\ud Management System. Of late a number of Fisheries in Malawi, like those of lakes Malombe, Chiuta and Chilwa have\ud adopted the Fisheries Co-management approach. Fisheries co-management in Malawi was introduced in 1993. Experiences\ud so far gained indicate that sustainable fisheries resource co-management necessitates the acceptance and embeddedness of\ud the user group representative bodies within the fishing communities. Resource user representation and transparency in\ud decision making process are important in institutional development as these in turn impact on the legitimacy and\ud compliancy of the developed institutions. An understanding of the local organisational set-up and its dynamics is vital for\ud proper planning and implementation of the co-management approach. This paper gives experiences and lessons learnt from\ud co-management arrangements in lakes Malombe and Chiuta