The International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF), the non-profit association that is committed to developing and supporting responsible one-by-one tuna fisheries and supply chains, is delighted to announce that Mialy Andriamahefazafy of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, has joined its Board of Trustees.
In the role, alongside her fellow trustees, she will help guide IPNLF’s future progress, overseeing the governance of the organisation and informing its international work.
With a background in environmental law and policy, Mialy Andriamahefazafy has considerable on-the-ground fisheries experience thanks in part to her earlier work for Blue Ventures, where she advised on marine policy and marine protected areas in the country and developed different fisheries policy documents in collaboration with the Ministry of fisheries. As such, she is ideally placed to provide support to IPNLF staff on issues related to practical interactions with fishery stakeholders.
After completing a degree in Public Law at the University of Antananarivo, she studied Environmental Law and Climate Change at Pace Law School in New York. In 2014, she completed an MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge. She is now a researcher and teaching assistant in Political Ecology at the University of Lausanne’s Institute of Geography and Sustainability, investigating the link between small-scale and industrial tuna fisheries in terms of access to the resources, overfishing and regional collaboration between the West Indian Ocean countries. Her research allows her to be familiar with the fishers and the various stakeholders involved in tuna fisheries along with their different perspectives in the region.
‘Mialy is a respected environmental policy specialist who has a strong track record of helping support coastal communities and fisheries resources, particularly in her native Madagascar and the Western Indian Ocean. Her background and experience in the field together with her empathy towards coastal communities make her an ideal addition to our board and the broader IPNLF team,’ said IPNLF chairman John Burton.
‘The work of IPNLF in supporting coastal states of the Indian Ocean is very interesting and timely,’ Mialy Andriamahefazafy commented.
‘I am glad to be able to bring my views as a researcher and islanderR03; to help with unravelling the complexities of tuna fisheries and challenges faced by coastal states. I am really pleased to have been invited to work with the International Pole & Line Foundation and I look forward to contributing to its local engagement and marine conservation efforts.”
