Community perception on the impacts of the tragedy of commons towards fisheries resources at Namasagali fishing villages.

Abstract

The study examined the perceived impacts of the tragedy of the commons on the fisheries resource; the case study of Namasagali Sub-County. The fisheries resource of the sub-county is from Victoria Nile which has its way through Namasagali sub-county and from which fishing activity takes place in a number of landing sites/fishing villages including: Kalama, Kakindu, Kadungu, Kasanga, Namasagali and Malugulia landing sites. The study used qualitative approach to collect data, analyze and present it. The methods of data collection used were interviews, questionnaires and field observations. The data was collected from a sample of eighty-one respondents, which include 70 males and 11 females. Data was analyzed using Excel and SPSS 16, which facilitated the drawing of pie charts, bar graphs and tables used to analyze the relationships between different variables. Findings from. the study indicate that men dominate the fishing activity shown by 86.4%, Compared to 13.6% for the women fishing was found to be main occupation and major income source here. The finding from the study indicated that most people have been in the -fishing activity from 1-5 years and most of the believe that their activity is being regulated shown be 93% and these regulations have been found to be having some problems such lower catch, conflict, stealing of legal gears. The study has also shown that there is general reduction in- the fish stock manifested by reduction in the current harvest for instance in the previous 5 years’ majority of the people were harvesting over 10kgs unlike now days where majority is harvesting between 0-5kgs only. Basing on these results, it is noticed that fishing activities such fishing, smoking, boat landing, transporting and selling fish and fish products poses dangers on the environment and they include: deforestation, coastal modification, species facing threat of extinction and others and the known measures to address these problems includes afforestation, re-afforestation, cutting mature trees only among others. In conclusion the low restriction on the entry and exploitation of the fish resources has resulted into massive reduction in the fish stock reveal by the high reduction in the current harvest compared to the- harvest in the previous 5 years This also confirms the fact that when the fish resources are openly accessed it causes what is called the tragedy of commons and its effects as each fishermen aims at maximizing his personal catch and this brings about the use of bad fishing methods of fishing such as using kokota, casts netting which catches even the immature fish that then result into low catch by all the fishermen.