Lesson from Lake Malombe’s Changing Catchment: ACEWM PhD Candidate Investigates Ecosystems Governance and Landscape Planning.

Inland tropical freshwater shallow lakes in Africa contribute significantly to local and global communities. These ecosystem services (ESs) contributions are aligned to UN SDGs and demonstrate a positive contribution to humanity in terms of the food systems and climate regulations. Human activities alongside climatic drivers are changing inland freshwater shallow lakes’ ecosystems and associated biodiversity across the globe.
Rodgers Makwinja is a PhD candidate at ACEWM specializing in Aquatic Ecosystem Management. Holding BSc and two MSc degrees in the fields of Fisheries and Water Resources and Supply Management, his research works focus on natural resource economics, sustainability science, human-nature conflict, modeling, landscape management, conservation and economic policies, livelihood, and ecological restoration- pressing issues in the UN Agenda 2030 and African Union Agenda 2063.
His Ph.D. research is tailored to FAO building resilience to climate change in Malawi’s inland fisheries sector. Under this project, he has reviewed and customized the FAO training manual on the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management.
Through his research work, he aspires to demonstrate how an understanding of the ecosystem services values, interaction, tradeoffs, ecological dynamics, local communities’ livelihood, adaptation strategies, and the drivers of ecosystem dynamics influence local, national, regional, and global policies and restoration effort in a changing catchment. His Ten Ph.D. research publications have meticulously linked economics, ecology, socio-psychology, and policy within one broader framework and demonstrated how freshwater ecosystem management approaches could be integrated into multi-sectoral policies to reduce tradeoffs, promote synergies, and enhance the livelihood of local communities’ resilience and ecological restoration. The primary focus of his research projects is to promote multi-disciplinary approaches to ecological science and management and improve natural and social sciences integration in informing local, national, regional, and global ecosystem management policies.
His first publication‘ Economic value of tropical inland freshwater shallow lakes: Lesson from Lake Malombe, Malawi’is linked to anthropocentric and utilitarian economic philosophies. It demonstrates that Lake Malombe ESs underpin the livelihood of 97.74% of households and contribute US$124.36 million/year. The research further generates scientific and public debate one cosystem services (ESs)management while sensitizing policy makers, planners, and the general public about inland freshwater shallow lakes’ importance to local and global communities. It advocates developing inland freshwater shallow lakes’ national policy in African countries to advance the 2030 UN Agenda, African Union Agenda 2063,and 2050 Biodiversity Vision. The ecological, economic, and political challenges in managing multiple ESs in a changing catchment were also exhibited in this research.
In his second publication, Rodgers looked into the ‘Impact of land use/land cover dynamics on ecosystem service value: a case from Lake Malombe, Southern Malawi’ and the research demonstrated a net loss in ESs and fisheries values of about US$ 45.58 million and US$8.65 million from 1989 to 2019 in response to landscape dynamics. He then went on to study the ‘Complex interactions between benefits, ecosystem services, and landscape dynamics: a synthesis of lake Malombe, Malawi’. The study suggests that it is impossible to manage all ESs in inland freshwater shallow lakes under a changing catchment in Africa.
The demand and management of ESs were also investigated in his publication titled ‘Managing ecosystem services demand under a changing catchment: a case study of Lake Malombe Catchment, Malawi’ The study revealed that SDGs focusing on economic development are heavily linked to EPSs, while cultural, supporting regulatory services are linked to pro-conservation SDGs. Such conflicts are reflected in goals linked to the African Union Agenda 2063 and various national sectoral policies in African countries. It is believed that research outputs like this one contribute to biophysical, sociological, economic, and ecological disciplines by identifying the ecosystem disservices to be integrated into the development indicators. Also, it demonstrates that what the local population regards as positive effects on their well-being contributes to their vulnerability and severe ecological and economic consequences on the sustainability of the lake ecosystem functions. These research findings are echoedin his two other publications, ‘Spatial distribution of zooplankton in response to ecological dynamics in tropical shallow lake: insight from Lake Malombe, Malawi’ and ‘Modeling of Lake Malombe Annual Fish Landings and Catch per Unit Effort (CPUE)’
His study on the fishing communities’ livelihood, vulnerability, and adaptation strategies of lake Malombe argued that vulnerability factors among the local communities’ livelihood asset base influence how they adapt to the changing ecosystems. He also studied the fish stock fluctuation: Ecosystem and fisherfolks. These papers advocate that local, national, regional, and global policies should provide diverse alternative livelihood opportunities to address the constraints of the current unsustainable local communities’ adaptation strategies.
Another one of his publications‘ Application of DPSIR and Tobit Models in Assessing Freshwater Ecosystems’ hinges upon Ramsar Conservation on Wetlands (Resolution VIII. 16, 2002) and the UN Agenda 2030. It proposes developing a sustainability framework to advance policy conflict resolution while exploiting available data to implement the lake ecosystem restoration programs.
In most of his research works, Rodgers tries to put sustainable development goals into perspective. For instance, his publication on the ‘Willingness to pay for the ecological restoration of an inland freshwater shallow lake’ aligns with African Union Agenda 2063 (Goal 7). It promotes ecological sustainability, climate-resilient economies, and communities by giving local communities full responsibility to support the restoration of the degraded lake ecosystem (Goal 20).
Overall, Rogers’ dissertation advances scientific knowledge and provides practical guidance for inland freshwater shallow lakes’ ecosystems governance and landscape planning. It provides inherent linkages between conservation science and practical policy responses, promotes the integration of science into policies, and guides strategic plans to conserve, restore and enhance ESs in inland freshwater shallow lakes in the least developed countries while improving local communities’ resilience to achieve Aichi Biodiversity Targets, African Union Agenda 2063 and United Nations Agenda 2030.It further provides a reference for further research and development of a sustainable framework, raising awareness about the roles and values of ESs derived from the shallow freshwater lakes for human well-being on a local, national, regional, and global scale while providing policy directions.
Rodgers reviewed the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services document, PLOS One, Journal of Mountain Science, Geocar to International, and Techno-Press journal articles. He has published extensively (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0818-4727) in multiple disciplines such as fish nutrition, modeling, sustainability science, ecological economics, ecotoxicology, limnology, and ecology, and has been cited in over 150 articles since 2017.