Burning Questions
Fellowship Award Winners

Josephine Pegg

Location: South Africa
Primary academic field: Aquatic science and fish conservation
Award category: PhD Holder

Topics to be Addressed during the Award Period:

Compare industrial freshwater aquaculture in South Africa and Laos, with attention to environmental, animal welfare, and rural livelihood trade-offs.

• Compare two countries at different stages of aquaculture industrialization - infancy in South Africa and well-established in Laos.
• Find out the extent to which large-scale freshwater (i.e. in rivers and lakes as opposed to in salt water in the ocean) farming of fish /shrimp /aquatic species displace or complement traditional catching of wild species in freshwater sites, particularly when the purpose of the latter is to provide food and food security for local people.
• Analyze the key environmental and fish welfare trade-offs associated with industrial freshwater aquaculture compared to small-scale fishing or farming, and to no fishing and farming at all.
• Examine how policy frameworks and international investment flows shape aquaculture developments, and how these developments have implications for equity, biodiversity, and rural livelihoods.

Some of the Things We Really Liked when We Read the Application:

• This application covers aquaculture in both broad as well specific ways. In other words, it has multiple targets and serves multiple functions: Broad in the sense that: i) It deals with several large aspects - environment, livelihoods, animal welfare. ii) It aims to provide a template that is applicable to different LMICs. Specific in the sense that it engages closely with two specific communities on the ground, in two very different parts of the world.
• The approach of choosing, comparing and contrasting Laos and South Africa is smart because one can learn a lot from that comparison. Both are models of how large-scale aquaculture is being rolled out across LMICs. But these models are very different, and at very different stage of development: Laos is through direct infrastructure investment and foreign export markets; production has already reached international industrial scale (as seen in the 2,800-hectare Mekong River Pangasius Industrial Park which is developed with Chinese investment to export fish to China). South Africa is through state-backed industrialization schemes focused on domestic growth. Development is still in its infancy, but is actively promoted through government incentives (e.g. Operation Phakisa, and the Aquaculture Development and Enhancement Programme).