Harnessing the potential of vulnerability assessments for managing social-ecological systems

Thiault, Lauric; Jupiter, Stacy D.; Johnson, J. E.; Cinner, Joshua E.; Jarvis, Rebecca M.; Heron, Scott F.; Maina, Joseph; Marshall, Nadine; Marshall, Paul; Claudet, Joachim

doi:10.5751/es-12167-260201

Cited by 28 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 128 publications

(198 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In coastal communities, resilience to external shocks relies on adaptive capacity, defined as the “latent ability to implement effective responses to changes by minimizing, coping with, or recovering from the potential impacts of a stressor” [84] , and the ability to turn surprises into opportunities to evolve, renew, learn, and increase adaptive capacity [43] . Resilience in small island communities relies on adaptive capacities that include flexibility and diversity in livelihood strategies, multilevel governance systems that are participatory, and adaptive local knowledge systems ( [1] , [6] , [14] ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local practices and production confer resilience to rural Pacific food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Resilience of food systems is key to ensuring food security through crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented shock that reveals varying levels of resilience of increasingly interconnected food systems across the globe. We contribute to the ongoing debate about whether increased connectivity reduces or enhances resilience in the context of rural Pacific food systems, while examining how communities have adapted to the global shocks associated with the pandemic to ensure food security. We conducted 609 interviews across 199 coastal villages from May to October 2020 in Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu to understand community-level impacts and adaptations during the first 5–10 months of the COVID-19 crisis. We found that local food production practices and food sharing conferred resilience, and that imported foods could aid or inhibit resilience. Communities in countries more reliant on imports were almost twice as likely to report food insecurity compared to those least reliant. However, in places dealing with a concurrent cyclone, local food systems were impaired, and imported foods proved critical. Our findings suggest that policy in the Pacific should bolster sustainable local food production and practices. Pacific states should avoid becoming overly reliant on food imports, while having measures in place to support food security after disasters, supplementing locally produced and preserved foods with imported foods when necessary. Developing policies that promote resilient food systems can help prepare communities for future shocks, including those anticipated with climate change.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local practices and production confer resilience to rural Pacific food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We showed that satellite monitoring and perception surveys of various stakeholder groups can support each other in evaluating the performance of MPAs. Thus, it appears that we possess the legal, technical and conceptual tools to protect marine biodiversity via LSMPAs, which work as long as stakeholder involvement is duly considered [105][106][107]. The point is to use these tools.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the Performance of Four Very Large Marine Protected Areas with Different Levels of Protection

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last decades, several targets for marine conservation were set to counter the effects of increasing fishing pressure, e.g., protecting 10% of the sea by 2020, and establishing large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs). Using the ‘reconstructed’ catch data for 1950 to 2018 made available by the Sea Around Us initiative, we show that the declaration of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in 1983 by the U.S.A. and its protection by the U.S. Coast Guard had a much bigger impact on catches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands than the subsequent creation of a LSMPA. This is similar to Pitcairn Islands, a UK territory. Trends differed sharply in the Galapagos and New Caledonia, where neither their EEZ declaration nor the LSMPA (by Ecuador in 1988 and by France in 2014) stopped local fisheries from continuous expansion. Our results also demonstrate that in the studied multizone LSMPAs continued local fishing induces a ‘fishing down’ effect wherein the mean trophic level (TL) declined, especially in the Galapagos, by 0.1 TL per decade. Stakeholders’ responses to a short questionnaire and satellite imagery lent support to these results in that they documented substantial fishing operations and ‘fishing the line’ within and around multizone LSMPAs. In the case of EEZs around less populated or unpopulated islands, banning foreign fishing may reduce catch much more than a subsequent LSMPA declaration. This confirms that EEZs are a tool for coastal countries to protect their marine biodiversity and that allowing fishing in an MPA, while politically convenient, may result in ‘paper parks’ within which fishing can cause the same deleterious effects as in wholly unprotected areas.

show abstract

“…We adapted the vulnerability assessment framework outlined by Marshall and colleagues [ 46 ] and Thiault and colleagues [ 47 ] to investigate the vulnerability of fishing communities ( Fig 1 ). We first determine ecological risk, a combination of the ecological exposure and ecological sensitivity of target species to changing climate conditions ( Table 1 , Fig 1 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social-ecological vulnerability of fishing communities to climate change: A U.S. West Coast case study

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change is already impacting coastal communities, and ongoing and future shifts in fisheries species productivity from climate change have implications for the livelihoods and cultures of coastal communities. Harvested marine species in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem support U.S. West Coast communities economically, socially, and culturally. Ecological vulnerability assessments exist for individual species in the California Current but ecological and human vulnerability are linked and vulnerability is expected to vary by community. Here, we present automatable, reproducible methods for assessing the vulnerability of U.S. West Coast fishing dependent communities to climate change within a social-ecological vulnerability framework. We first assessed the ecological risk of marine resources, on which fishing communities rely, to 50 years of climate change projections. We then combined this with the adaptive capacity of fishing communities, based on social indicators, to assess the potential ability of communities to cope with future changes. Specific communities (particularly in Washington state) were determined to be at risk to climate change mainly due to economic reliance on at risk marine fisheries species, like salmon, hake, or sea urchins. But, due to higher social adaptive capacity, these communities were often not found to be the most vulnerable overall. Conversely, certain communities that were not the most at risk, ecologically and economically, ranked in the category of highly vulnerable communities due to low adaptive capacity based on social indicators (particularly in Southern California). Certain communities were both ecologically at risk due to catch composition and socially vulnerable (low adaptive capacity) leading to the highest tier of vulnerability. The integration of climatic, ecological, economic, and societal data reveals that factors underlying vulnerability are variable across fishing communities on the U.S West Coast, and suggests the need to develop a variety of well-aligned strategies to adapt to the ecological impacts of climate change.

show abstract

Harnessing the potential of vulnerability assessments for managing social-ecological systems

Cited by 28 publications

References 128 publications

Local practices and production confer resilience to rural Pacific food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

Local practices and production confer resilience to rural Pacific food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

Comparing the Performance of Four Very Large Marine Protected Areas with Different Levels of Protection

Social-ecological vulnerability of fishing communities to climate change: A U.S. West Coast case study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About