Of Darwin's Dreams and Nightmares: The Concealed Violence of Global Whitefish Commodity

Abstract

Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater body and home to one of the most dramatic speciation of indigenous cichlids in the world. Bordered by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa, the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) provides food, water and livelihoods for over 30 million people around its shores. The Colonial era introduction of the invasive Nile perch (Lates niloticus) the 1950’s, combined with the introduction of industrialized fish processing in the 1980’s, rapidly altered socio-ecological systems throughout the LVB. The introduction and commercial harvesting of the Nile perch, subsequent human population growth, and the looming problems of climate change continue to compromise the health of this socio-ecological system. While the Nile perch trade provides much needed foreign currency to these three exporting nations, the increased fishing pressure on wild stocks, driven by global demand and the subsequent influx of industrial fishing technology, compromises the long term sustainability of wild fish populations, food security and sovereignty, the fishing way of life, and fishing in local places around the lake. The following thesis applies a global commodity chain framework to the case of the export-oriented Nile perch from the Kenyan island of Mfangano comparing 1988 and 2007 European export data. Unless otherwise noted all price and empirical data are based on interviews, market surveys, and participant observation conducted by the author in Kenya in June, July, and August of 2007. In 2007, prices paid to local fishermen and agents represent 23% of the total value from the fishery, prices paid to processors represent 32% of the value, and 45% of the value accrues to international seafood wholesalers and retailers. I also argue that efforts to improve ecological and human health and wellbeing around the basin have failed largely because managers, scholars, and development professionals have overlooked the widespread ecological and domestic violence committed by the Nile perch and Nile perch trade. Through the commodity chain and discussion of resource violence in the LVB I pose critical questions about the value of the fishery to various actors in the global commodity chain. Results from the commodity chain analysis are then used to critically assess ongoing and proposed aquaculture development, sustainability certification for the Nile perch fishery, the establishment of protected areas in the lake.