Alternative Policy and Management
Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) is now an internationally accepted paradigm that accommodates the delicate interaction of the social, ecological and physical environment along our coasts. It provides a framework for balancing sustainable livelihoods with other economic and physical developments. Towards this end Masifundise recognises the need to actively affirm the critical importance of an Integrated Coastal Management approach and to ensure that historically marginalised coastal communities have the capacities to participate as equal and active partners in this process. (link to Turf document)
Co-management has gained increasing recognition world-wide as an appropriate, alternative fisheries management system that aims to maximise people's involvement in fisheries management, planning and decision making. This system has been introduced elsewhere with many benefits to local communities as well as extensive research which suggests that it may be a more sustainable approach. This approach demands a thorough shift in perspective and practice - at the level of community as well as within the managing institutions. A shift towards a more people-centred approach is in line with the principles contained in the South African Constitution that have also been echoed in the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) of 1997.
The process of preparing for and implementing co-management, implemented within a transformative, democratic paradigm, has the potential to be a vehicle for promoting and maximizing the realisation of a number of basic human rights whilst promoting people's organisation, democracy and sustainable environmental governance. Integral to this conception of people driven, community based natural resource management is a belief in the importance of community organisation, the integration of indigenous knowledge systems into management decision-making processes and a holistic, integrated approach to livelihoods and local development.