Prof Moenieba Isaacs

Moenieba Isaacs is a Full Professor with the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of Western Cape (UWC). She is the academic manager for postgraduate teaching, co-coordinator of accredited short-course training on the Political Economy of Land Governance in Africa and on Living Landscapes in Action: new thinking on integrating biodiversity and social justice in southern Africa. 

Her research focus currently is on developing the concept of blue justice linking it to spatial injustices, the gendered dynamics of women in living landscapes in and around enclosures in the blue economy. She has worked extensively with communities in South Africa and in an engaged and reflective research where she develops her thinking tools. She is currently lead  PI on creating systemic redesign of the wet and dry conservation sector in Southern Africa called Living Landscapes in Action. Country coordinator for Small-scale fisheries (SSF) project on Vulnerability to Viability (V2V). Team member transformative social innovations in the governance of small-scale fisheries in the Indian ocean region. She was co-PI on African food systems and Covid-19 PLAAS – one-year action-oriented project entitled “The Impacts of Covid-19 Responses on the Political Economy of African Food Systems”.She is part of the Programme Committee of the Marine and Coastal Science for Management (MASMA) programme – a regional competitive research granting mechanism providing funding and technical support for coastal and marine research, training and communications in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region.

Small-scale fisheries management and rights, Individual Transfer Quotas (ITQs)

• PhD on the implementation of new fisheries policies in four South African fishing communities, University of the Western Cape, 2004
• MPhil, University of the Western Cape