IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/marpol/v36y2012i1p218-225.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unreported fishing, hungry people and political turmoil: the recipe for a food security crisis in Madagascar?

Author

Listed:
  • Le Manach, Frédéric
  • Gough, Charlotte
  • Harris, Alasdair
  • Humber, Frances
  • Harper, Sarah
  • Zeller, Dirk

Abstract

Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, is one of the world's poorest developing countries, and its people depend heavily on marine resources for subsistence and income. Exports of these resources and foreign fishing access agreements are also important, at least from a large-scale economic perspective. In recent years, concerns have been voiced amongst local fishers and industry groups regarding the growth of the country's fishing effort. Despite these concerns, existing knowledge of the scale, composition and trends of Malagasy fisheries remains poor, and there is negligible information regarding unreported catches and illegal fishing in Madagascar's waters. Small-scale fisheries, which are often substantial in developing countries such as Madagascar, are often unreported or underestimated. Unfortunately, fisheries legislations, management plans and foreign fishing access agreements are often influenced by these incomplete data, leading to serious over-estimations of resource availability. This also appears to be the situation in Madagascar, where the reconstruction of total catches by all Malagasy fisheries sectors conducted here showed that total catches between 1950 and 2008 were twice the volume reported by national fisheries agencies. Most importantly, much of the subsistence sector is missing from official statistics, and signs of decline have already been observed in several stocks, suggesting that current levels of catches are likely to be exceeding sustainable yields. This has profound implications for the economic and ecological sustainability of fisheries, as well as food security in a country where people rely heavily on the ocean for their daily protein needs and livelihoods.

Suggested Citation

  • Le Manach, Frédéric & Gough, Charlotte & Harris, Alasdair & Humber, Frances & Harper, Sarah & Zeller, Dirk, 2012. "Unreported fishing, hungry people and political turmoil: the recipe for a food security crisis in Madagascar?," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 218-225, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:36:y:2012:i:1:p:218-225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X11000960
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Barnes-Mauthe, Michele & Oleson, Kirsten L.L. & Brander, Luke M. & Zafindrasilivonona, Bienvenue & Oliver, Thomas A. & van Beukering, Pieter, 2015. "Social capital as an ecosystem service: Evidence from a locally managed marine area," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 283-293.
    2. Long, Stephen & Thurlow, Grace & Jones, Peter JS Dr & Turner, Andrew & Randrianantenaina, Sylvestre & Savage, Jessica & Ndriamanja, Jeremie, 2019. "Critical analysis of the governance of the Sainte Luce Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA), southeast Madagascar," MarXiv 3ugkp, Center for Open Science.
    3. Wallner-Hahn, Sieglind & Dahlgren, Malin & de la Torre-Castro, Maricela, 2022. "Linking seagrass ecosystem services to food security: The example of southwestern Madagascar’s small-scale fisheries," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    4. Humber, Frances & Andriamahefazafy, Mialy & Godley, Brendan John & Broderick, Annette Cameron, 2015. "Endangered, essential and exploited: How extant laws are not enough to protect marine megafauna in Madagascar," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 70-83.
    5. Oleson, Kirsten L.L. & Barnes, Michele & Brander, Luke M. & Oliver, Thomas A. & van Beek, Ingrid & Zafindrasilivonona, Bienvenue & van Beukering, Pieter, 2015. "Cultural bequest values for ecosystem service flows among indigenous fishers: A discrete choice experiment validated with mixed methods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 104-116.
    6. Bacalso, Regina Therese M. & Wolff, Matthias & Rosales, Rina Maria & Armada, Nygiel B., 2016. "Effort reallocation of illegal fishing operations: A profitable scenario for the municipal fisheries of Danajon Bank, Central Philippines," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 331(C), pages 5-16.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:36:y:2012:i:1:p:218-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.