Modelling human well-being for fisheries management: Science, extraction and a politics of nature in Walvis Bay, Namibia

This PhD research focuses on the industrial hake fishery in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The research investigates the ways in which the logic of neoliberalism affects relations between scientific knowledge production, historical labour practices, political decision-making and local traditions of knowing and navigating the ocean.

The project explores the efficacy of statistical and scientific models in the industrial fishing sector and considers how breakdowns between the scientific, social and political knowledge worlds can be usefully brought into the fisheries management framework. By focusing on the relations of risk in the everyday lives of Walvis Bay workers and residents, the study offers an innovative approach that combines political economy and political ecology in Namibian fisheries management. The researcher proposes how the consideration of historical injustices in fisheries ecology offers pathways toward ecological and economic justice.