TY - JOUR

T1 - Aquaculture, fish resources and rural livelihoods

T2 - a village CGE analysis from Namibia’s Zambezi Region

AU - Gronau, Steven

AU - Winter, Etti

AU - Grote, Ulrike

N1 - Funding information: This article has been written in the context of the project ‘SASSCAL—Southern African Service Science Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management’ (http://www.sasscal.org/). The project is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [01LG1201H].

PY - 2020/2

Y1 - 2020/2

N2 - Aquaculture is widely recognised as a way to reduce malnutrition and poverty. So far, research has mainly focused on Asia, and the few studies available from sub-Saharan Africa are predominantly ex-post partial analyses. By constructing a village computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, we aim to investigate whether aquaculture improves local livelihoods and simultaneously has the potential to counteract local overfishing. We apply this to a rural case study region in Namibia where malnutrition, poverty and fish resource overexploitation are current problems. Our village CGE model shows that aquaculture would be a viable livelihood activity improving household incomes and utility through labour reallocations. Furthermore, aquaculture can counteract malnutrition through increased fish consumption. Higher opportunity costs lead to households leaving the fisheries and switching to aquaculture. These substitution effects offer the possibility of reducing the pressure on local freshwater fish stocks. Policy makers can use the results to introduce aquaculture interventions in rural areas. Our findings indicate that such interventions should take particular account of the poorest households, which are most dependent on fisheries. The derived opportunity costs provide information about payments that are necessary to make policy interventions acceptable for different household groups.

AB - Aquaculture is widely recognised as a way to reduce malnutrition and poverty. So far, research has mainly focused on Asia, and the few studies available from sub-Saharan Africa are predominantly ex-post partial analyses. By constructing a village computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, we aim to investigate whether aquaculture improves local livelihoods and simultaneously has the potential to counteract local overfishing. We apply this to a rural case study region in Namibia where malnutrition, poverty and fish resource overexploitation are current problems. Our village CGE model shows that aquaculture would be a viable livelihood activity improving household incomes and utility through labour reallocations. Furthermore, aquaculture can counteract malnutrition through increased fish consumption. Higher opportunity costs lead to households leaving the fisheries and switching to aquaculture. These substitution effects offer the possibility of reducing the pressure on local freshwater fish stocks. Policy makers can use the results to introduce aquaculture interventions in rural areas. Our findings indicate that such interventions should take particular account of the poorest households, which are most dependent on fisheries. The derived opportunity costs provide information about payments that are necessary to make policy interventions acceptable for different household groups.

KW - Aquaculture

KW - Fish resources

KW - Rural households

KW - Village computable general equilibrium model

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049555237&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10668-018-0212-1

DO - 10.1007/s10668-018-0212-1

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85049555237

VL - 22

SP - 615

EP - 642

JO - Environment, Development and Sustainability

JF - Environment, Development and Sustainability

SN - 1387-585X

IS - 2

ER -