Agriculture, fisheries, and aquaculture ministers from 14 countries that are members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have issued a report on the organization’s Protocol on Fisheries, which seeks to harmonize the countries’ domestic fisheries legislation.
The ministers met on 13 May, 2022 in Lilongwe, Malawi, to review the steps SADC member-states have made toward advancing the protocol.
Although the details of the report are yet to be made public, the ministers’ joint statement issued after the meeting indicated some of the countries within the SADC have yet to accede to the protocol even though the protocol was endorsed in 2001 by the heads of state of each of the SADC member-countries. One of the meeting’s resolutions implored the holdout nations to formally adopt the protocol.
The protocol is expected to support the conservation and sustainable use of living aquatic resources and aquatic ecosystems within the jurisdiction of the 14 countries, and has several articles addressing cross-cutting issues on the management of shared resources such as inland water resources.