Merle Sowman is the Director of the EEU and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at UCT. She obtained her PhD in the field of integrated coastal management from UCT in 1994, and has been involved in research, consulting and teaching on integrated environmental and coastal management since 1985. Her key areas of interest are mainstreaming environmental sustainability issues into sector planning and decision-making processes, co-management of coastal and small-scale fisheries resources, and procedures and methods of environmental assessment.

Over the years Merle has been involved in a diverse range of research and consulting projects, ranging from integrating environmental sustainability issues into the integrated development planning process in South Africa, through investigating the social, economic and institutional dimensions of the artisanal fisheries sector in countries falling within the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME), to assisting the FAO prepare technical guidelines on human dimensions of the Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries management. She is currently leading a team that is preparing a Sustainable Development Implementation Plan for the Western Cape government, the first action plan of its kind in South Africa.

Merle has participated in a number of environmental and coastal management policy formulation processes, and has served at local and international levels on various technical committees and advisory groups concerned with the management of coastal and small-scale fisheries resources. Merle has extensive training and capacity building experience in integrated environmental and coastal management, and has directed and/or trained on over 30 short courses and capacity building workshops throughout the SADC region.

Email: Merle.Sowman@uct.ac.za
Phone: 021-6502863

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Rachel holds two Masters degrees, one in Marine Biology, and the other in Environmental Science, both awarded cum laude from the University of Cape Town, and a doctorate from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, focused on pro-poor models of non-timber forest product commercialisation in southern Africa. Based at the Environmental Evaluation Unit, University of Cape Town since 2005, Rachel is also a trustee and founding member of two South African NGOs, the Environmental Monitoring Group, and Biowatch South Africa.

Email: Rachel.Wynberg@uct.ac.za
          Rachel@iafrica.com
Phone: 021-6502865

Maria Hauck has a background in criminology, having completed her BA (honours Criminology) at the University of Edmonton (Canada) and her MA (Criminology) at the University of Cape Town. She completed her PhD in early 2009, with a specific focus on small-scale fisheries compliance. Maria spent six years at the Institute of Criminology (UCT) before moving to the EEU in 2002. She has spent more than a decade researching informal (ie: ‘illegal’) fisheries, the compliance discourse and the underlying social and political dynamics associated with these. This has led her to explore alternative strategies to reactive law enforcement and thus, she has gained expertise in the area of natural resource management and governance. This has largely focused on establishing new approaches and methods of achieving compliance and instituting partnership arrangements between resource users and government. Maria’s current research, which includes international and regional collaborations, focuses on issues such as social justice, equitable benefit-sharing and participatory management approaches, and how these relate to enhancing sustainable fisheries governance.

Email: Maria.Hauck@uct.ac.za
Phone: 021-6502872

Serge Raemaekers joined the EEU as a post-doctoral research fellow in April 2009, after having completed his PhD at Rhodes University where he analysed the governance approaches to the abalone and lobster fisheries in the Eastern Cape Province. Serge is a natural scientist with an MSc degree in bioscience engineering from the University of Ghent (Belgium, 2003), but has gained expertise in inter-disciplinary research on understanding and assessing livelihoods and fishing practices, and while undertaking participatory ecological and socio-economic research with local rural communities. Since 2007, he has been contributing his research findings and ideas to the South African small-scale fisheries policy development process. His post-doctoral research engages with systems thinking and fisheries governance theory with the aim to recommend governance models and management approaches that are more applicable to small-scale fishers ‘realities.

Email: s.raemaekers@telenet.be
Phone: 021 650 2879

Fahdelah Hartley is the EEU's Senior Secretary and has been with the Unit since February, 2000.
 
Fahdelah is responsible for reception and general administrative duties. These duties include workshop logistics, travel and accommodation arrangements for members of staff, liaising with sub-consultants, and HR matters within the Unit.

Ntombovuyo Madlokazi completed a BSc and BSc (Honours) degree at the University of Fort Hare (UFH), majoring in Ecology and Plant Physiology. She joined the EEU in March 2008 as an intern. She assists with and works on various aspects within the unit namely:

• Project support in the form of assisting with workshop organisation;
• Research: gathering information and collecting data and report writing; editing and references; and
• Administrative support.