Chapter 12 Devolution of Governance and the Politics of Fishery at Lake Naivasha, Kenya

In: Agricultural Intensification, Environmental Conservation, Conflict and Co-Existence at Lake Naivasha, Kenya
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Johannes Dittmann
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Antony F. Ogolla
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Abstract

Inland fisheries in the Global South are characterized by highly complex social-ecological dynamics that require interdisciplinary approaches to investigate. However, many studies in the field primarily take a natural-science perspective focusing on ecological, physical or demographic factors. In the academic literature on inland fisheries of the Global South, social and political aspects are often not sufficiently recognized. This chapter takes a political-ecology perspective to analyse social-economic complexities and political driving forces of recent dynamics in Lake Naivasha’s fishery. It outlines how political transformation in the course of the devolution of the Kenyan government has led to the increase of political interference in natural-resource management, corrosion of environmental governance and the ethnicization of fishery. The effects of devolution on fishery in Naivasha show that the way political shifts restructure local power constellations must be taken into account when analysing social-ecological dynamics of wetlands in the Global South.

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