Adopting the Use of Indigenous Knowledge to Alleviate the Decline of Living Marine Resources in South Africa

Most living organisms found in the ocean are vital to human life. They can be used for a myriad of activities ranging from human consumption to making cosmetic products. The variety of usages attracted attention, and there was an influx of natural and juristic persons into coastal areas to exploit these resources. This resulted in declining living marine resources due to over-exploitation and over-reliance. The need to regulate the living marine resources to protect and preserve their existence became evident. Thus, a plethora of legislation related to the marine environment was promulgated. Amongst other legislation, the Marine Living Resources Act 18 of 1998 (MLRA) was promulgated to ensure living marine resources management, conservation, and preservation. However, even in its existence, living marine resources continue to decline. Under these circumstances, Indigenous knowledge could be adopted to assist in alleviating the decline of living marine resources and augmenting the MLRA. Indigenous knowledge boasts methods of managing, conserving, and preserving living marine resources. Therefore, this paper calls for the need to incorporate some of these Indigenous knowledge practices into the MLRA. In buttressing the need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge in the MLRA, this study shall adopt a non-empirical and qualitative research approach.