Transcript paper

Should we hang up our nets?
Adaptation and conflict within fisheries - insights for
living with climate change
Dr Sarah Coulthard
School of Environmental Sciences
Ulster University
Why fisheries and climate change?
1. International concern for increasing the visibility of fisheries
in climate change debates (FAO)
2. Fisheries in crisis - an opportunity to capture learning?
The current fisheries ‘crisis’ necessitates adaptation in fishing
societies… what shapes adaptation and whether it takes
place?
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Coping with or adapting to?
What shapes decisions and ‘thresholds’ within the family?
3. Adaptation in fisheries – evidence of conflict?
1. Increasing the visibility of fisheries in climate change
debates
1) High dependency on fisheries
Fisheries and aquaculture directly employ over 36 million people worldwide
[98 % per cent of whom are in developing countries]
There are 520 million fisheries-dependent people (ancillary occupations)
1/3 of the global population rely on
fish produce for 1/5 of their annual
protein intake (FAO)
2. Resource collapse (overfishing)
Worm et al (2006) predict we will
run out of commercial fish stocks
by 2048
3) Collapse exacerbated by climate change
Changing fish migration, habitat destruction and
ocean acidification
4) High vulnerability of coastal fishing people
[Flooding, storms, sea level rise]
5. Unequal vulnerability
The vulnerability of national economies to potential climate change
impacts on fisheries (Allison et al 2009)
Fisheries in crisis and pressures to adapt.
Livelihood threats
1. Less fish
2. Less fishing access (increasingly restrictive and generalist global
fisheries policy)
e.g. IUCN Road map to establish a global network of marine parks by
2012
Creates pressure on fishermen and women to adapt / change their
livelihoods....
‘alternative livelihoods’ =
to move out of fishing
Adaptation pressures are often highly unfair…
e.g. West African fisheries
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Highly vulnerable to climate change impacts on fisheries
Often have under-developed fisheries (small scale)
High focus for conservation interests (e.g. Marine Protected Area
networks)
Currently overfished by EU fishing fleets (legal agreements / poor
enforcement)
Hands off my fish! (SelFISH Europe report) Action Aid (Senegal) 2008
(Impacts on women fish traders)
2. Fisheries in crisis - an opportunity to capture learning?
A focus on the difference between ‘coping strategies’ and
‘adaptation’
• Mixed terminologies ‘adaptive coping strategies ….’
• Fishers as experts in ‘coping’– but many have reached the outer range
of their coping capacity
Coping = short term, flexible, livelihood diversification
Adaptation = longer term and more permanent [moving out of fisheries
completely]
Positive adaptation ‘of choice and reversible…concerned with risk
reduction’
Negative adaptation irreversible…’forced to adapt when coping with short
term shocks is no longer possible’ (Davies and Hossain 1997)
In fisheries – a move from diversifying
livelihoods (coping) to moving out of
fisheries completely (adapting) is a
complex decision
Key questions:
• How are decisions negotiated within
structures of society, household, needs,
and aspirations?
• What is the ‘threshold’ between coping
and adapting?
• Is adaptation to be chosen or policy
induced? ‘agency in adaptation’
?
3. Adaptation in fisheries – evidence of conflict around
‘thresholds’ in South Indian fisheries…
Evidence 1.
Conflict between the promotion of ‘livelihood alternatives’
(moving out of fisheries) vs. a strong attachment to a
fishing way of life
“When I hear the words
alternative livelihoods I feel a
fire in my stomach.
For whom will you provide
alternatives?
Do you have jobs for all
fishermen here?”
Fishermen meeting with
academics, India 2007
“A man may leave his wife but never
his fishing spot”
(local Tamil saying,
South India)
Divisions between fishing youth and elders (potential for
conflict?)
Interview with fishing youths (2007)
Q: How do you see the future of this area?
A: “We want jobs to come here. There is no future in fishing.
We want industry and tourism here”
Q: Won’t this affect your fathers fishing practice?
A: “you have to lose a little to gain a little”.
Evidence 2 – conflict around policy induced ‘adaptation’ – the Coastal
Zone Management notification (CMZ) in India
• Pre Tsunami – CRZ Act 1991 (conservation of habitat at the coast
through different classifications for coastal use
• Post tsunami – vulnerability of coastal human population was
centralized in coastal policy making (UNEP Cairo meet 2004)
Trawler wrecks North Chennai 7.1.05
Fishing communities South Chennai 9.1.05
•Amendments to the Coastal Zone regulation Act in order to protect the
human
• Coastal Zone Management notification draft (2008) included a ‘set back
/ Hazard line; scientifically defined with Remote sensing (GIS) by its
physical vulnerability to flooding and sea level rise.
• Coastal Zone Management ‘Better of Bitter fare’? (Menon et al 2007
EPW)
• Outcry from the fishing community and civil society during a 2 month
consultation period (May-June 2008)
“While it is not our case that fishermen should be allowed to
make indiscriminate use of the coastal space, a proper
provisioning for the development of the fishing community
needs to be made and this can only be in the coastal space.
The CMZ notification is basically a discriminatory document
that allows a number of new stakeholders to enter the coast
while ignoring the claims of those who have been traditionally
linked to the sea and have been the real owners and
protectors of the coast”…(V.Vivekanandan SIFFS)
“Toothless tiger and cringing dragon”
Also about ineffective legislation against other, more powerful
claimants of coastal space
“ The State Coastal Zone Management Authority is
completely ineffective and a toothless tiger…The MoEF,
despite all its powers, has preferred to be a dragon that
cringes before the powerful moneyed interests and has
allowed anarchic development to flourish on the coast”.
July 5th 2009 The Hindu newspaper
“CMZ draft to be reviewed to protect fishermen”
Parliamentary panel asks Centre to put CMZ notification on
hold
NEW DELHI: The Environment and Forests Ministry has
decided to review “discrepancies” in the draft on Coastal
Zone Management (CMZ) 2008 notification, which is in its
final stages.
Opposing the notification, non-governmental organisations
and fishing communities alleged that it would “encourage”
and “legalise” industrial activities along coasts in the garb of
management methodologies, while curtailing the local
community’s access to sea resources.
Conclusions - parallel challenges between fisheries and
climate change research
• An adaptation fund for fisheries - sector specific (FAO)
• How to recognise, and work with, decision process to ‘adapt’ at personal,
societal and government levels [wellbeing?]
• Where is adaptation working / failing in fisheries (and other sectors) – can
this inform expectations in climate change (and other) debates (e.g. Marine
Bill UK)?
• Adaptation and agency? – deliberative forums to discuss and negotiate
trade offs in adaptation to change
E.g. CMZ (consultancy approach vs. open and informed debate forum?)
For more info contact: [email protected]