The latest issue of the African Journal of Aquatic Science, Volume 47, Issue 3 is a Special Medal Issue titled “Perspectives on Protecting African Freshwater Ecosystems in the Anthropocene”.
The announcement of this Special Medal Issue in 2020 outlined the growing and urgent concern for the state of Earth’s inland waters and called on authors to submit papers that would address a wide range of topics. The papers presented in the Special Medal Issue are arranged in three themes: freshwater ecosystem stressors; river basin and freshwater ecosystem management; and a case study.
‘While we sought contributions from a range of African countries, the Special Medal Issue is dominated by South African contexts, with welcome diversity and breadth coming from work in the Elephant Marsh in Malawi, and the Bukhari and Brown (2022) consideration of transboundary institutions,’ said Jackie King and Carolyn (Tally) Palmer in their Guest Editorial. This Special Medal Issue includes three papers on the Elephant Marsh in Malawi, which showcase the kind of research that can underpin balanced conservation strategies.
Most of the papers in this Special Medal Issue record deteriorating ecological health and escalating anthropogenic impact on our freshwater ecosystems. ‘The core recognition embedded in the term ‘Anthropocene’ is the extraordinary dominance of the human species on the planet – it is the proposed era when human impact on Earth‘s environment may be sufficiently substantive to warrant recognition of the Anthropocene as a distinct geological epoch,’ said Jackie King and Carolyn (Tally) Palmer.
They continued, “We are at a crucial time, when we must move past very successful concept and method development for freshwater ecosystem management, and into the more complex, expensive and time-consuming space of politics, social aspirations and on-the-ground implementation”.
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