HUMAN-RIGHTS, ENVIRONMENT, AND DEVELOPMENT - THE DISPOSSESSION OF FISHING COMMUNITIES ON LAKE MALAWI

In a growing number of cases throughout Africa, communities' resource bases are being undermined ol appropriated by outsiders a process whic h seriously threatens the continuation of local cultures and livelihoo ds. In this article, we use a political ecology framework to examine h ow the linked processes of economic development, political power, and environmental change are transgressing the rights of fishing communiti es on the shores of Lake Malawi. In the cases described, these communi ties, or community members within them, find themselves powerless to p revent the expropriation of the resources over which they previously h ad either legal or customary control. Thus, it is not the economic pro cesses of dispossession alone which lead to human rights violations bu t rather dispossession combined with an authoritarian political contex t.