THE GLOBAL IN THE LOCAL: THE ENVIRONMENTAL STATE AND THE MANAGEMENT OF THE NILE PERCH FISHERY ON LAKE VICTORIA.

The article discusses the environmental state and the management of the Nile Perch Fishery on lake Victoria. Lake Victoria, shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, is the world's second largest freshwater lake. The Nile Perch was introduced into the lake in the 1950s and its population exploded in the late l970s. Predation by this expanding population was the main cause of the extinction or near extinction of an estimated 300 fish species. The Nile Perch is a large, white, meaty fish which finds a ready international market. The Tanzanian State faces a complex policy environment as it seeks ways to manage the new fishery. Agencies responsible for economic growth and structural adjustment encourage the fish export industry. The agencies responsible for fisheries research and management, however, are more immediately affected by a second kind of globalization: an intense interest in the lake from international scientific, environmental and development groups. Fisheries management on Lake Victoria is an interesting case study of the environmental state. Resource management and conservation in Africa is central to the problem of structural adjustment because pressures to increase exports fall most heavily on agriculture and natural resources. The Lake Victoria case addresses several questions in the debate between conceptualizing the environmental state as the coordinator of the treadmill of production and the more recent idea of an ecological modernization that seeks to bring "human interaction with the subsistence base under rational ecological control."