| dc.description.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 | |
