Applying an adaptive capacity framework to predict fishers' responses to climate change

Abstract

The environment is changing at a rapid pace. Over the last decades, we have increased our understanding on how some marine species will respond to climate change. Predictions show that fisheries catch will decrease by 20-50% in temperate coastal areas. This has direct repercussions in small-scale fishers’ livelihoods. However, few studies have aimed to understand how small-scale fishers will respond to these predictions. This is critical as it has been shown that some fishers respond in a way that has an amplifying effect on the ecosystem that could jeopardize coastal social-ecological systems resilience. In this presentation, we use an adaptive capacity framework and test its ability to predict fishers’ strategies to a hypothetical decline in catch. The framework has 5 dimensions: i) Learning, ii) Flexibility, iii) Agency, iv) Social Organization and v) Assets. Fishers adapted by a) Fishing Harder, b) Moving Location, c) Changing target resource, d) Fishing less, e) Quit fishing or f) Continue. A national-wide survey in Chile was used for the analysis, where 575 TURF users and 60 presidents of fisher organizations were interviewed. Mixed effects binary logistic regressions were performed for each response using the framework as predictor. Results show that the framework significantly predicts fishers’ responses. We highlight that the majority of fishers would continue fishing or fish Harder, which can jeopardize the sustainability of this social-ecological system. Some important predictions are discussed in light of these findings. For example, with increasing age (flexibility indicator) it is less likely that fishers’ will exit the fishery and are more likely to fish harder. This can be explained because in Chile there is currently no retirement program for fishers. Understanding the variables that make certain responses more likely is critical for designing sound policies that consider the long term sustainability of the coastal marine TURF social-ecological system. Tuesday, 22 August - Room 21 (30) - 11:50 - 12:30 Spatial mapping and integrated assessment Approaches and methods for understanding social-ecological system dynamics Chair/s: Oral communication: Land-use change in forest-frontier contexts under telecoupling: addressing methodological mapping challenges in Laos, Myanmar, and Madagascar Julie G. Zähringer 1, Jorge C. Llopis 1, Phokham Latthachack 2, Andreas Heinimann 1, 3 1 Centre for Development and Environment - University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland 2 Faculty of Environmental Sciences - National University of Laos, Vientiane, Laos 3 Institute of Geography - University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Forest-frontier landscapes in the humid tropics show specific and distinct land-use change (LUC) dynamics compared to other world regions, while offering insightful examples of current global environmental and development challenges. Social-ecological systems (SES) in these contexts not only have to meet the livelihood needs and development aspirations of local populations, but are also expected to ensure ecosystem service flows to provide worldwide benefits to humans, to the point that global factors have outweighed local determinants of LUC in many such landscapes. Driven by demands for commercial agricultural production, carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation among others, distant socio-economic and environmental influences are becoming increasingly entangled, triggering not only rapid LUC processes at the local scale, but also unchaining multi-directional spill-over and feedback effects affecting other SES. These phenomena are what the land system science community has recently tagged as telecoupled situations. To reveal the implications of such dynamics for the resilience of SES, a first and key step is to apprehend the LUC trajectories occurring at the local level. However, methodological challenges arise when conducting spatially-explicit change assessments in these regions, given the high temporal variability at the plot level, compounded by the paucity of good quality satellite imagery. This paper presents the methodology developed to overcome this problematic in our comparative cross-country research, relying on a participatory approach to complement the available remote sensing data. This allows to coproduce together with local land users the knowledge needed to illuminate the LUC trends over the past