An official website of the United States government
Coastal ecosystems and human communities are threatened worldwide by climate change, and shocks from social, market and political change. There is an urgent global need to promote resilient food production and livelihoods in the face of these shocks. Small-scale fisheries (SSF) in rural settings can be particularly vulnerable as they frequently lack the resources, rights and infrastructure to respond to shocks originating outside the focal systems. We examined ecological and social outcomes of environmental extremes in a SSF socio-ecological system (SES) by using long-term oceanographic (between 2010-2019) and ecological (2006-2018) data tracking change in a kelp forest ecosystem of Baja California, Mexico, and concurrent documentation of proactive and reactive actions of a fishing community organized in a cooperative. Results indicate a complex landscape of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ among species and fisheries exposed to unprecedented environmental extremes, including marine heat waves and prolonged hypoxia, and a suite of adaptive actions by the local fishing cooperative, and others in the region, that have helped confront these rapid and drastic changes. Cooperatives have established voluntary marine reserves to promote recovery of affected populations and have invested in diversification of activities enabled by access rights, collective decision-making, and participatory science programs. Results indicate that local actions can support social and ecological resilience in the face of shocks, and that enabling locally-driven adaptation pathways is critical to resilience. This case study highlights the crucial importance of strengthening and supporting rights, governance, capacity, flexibility, learning, and agency for coastal communities to respond to change and sustain their livelihoods and ecosystems in the long run.
more »
« less
Social networks as risk-mitigation strategies in south-west Madagascar
Palaeoenvironmental data indicate that the climate of south-western Madagascar has changed repeatedly over the past millennium. Combined with socio-political challenges such as warfare and slave raiding, communities continually had to mitigate against risk. Here, the authors apply social network analysis to pottery assemblages from sites on the Velondriake coast to identify intercommunity connectivity and changes over time. The results indicate both continuity of densely connected networks and change in their spatial extent and structure. These network shifts coincided with periods of socio-political and environmental perturbation attested in palaeoclimate data and oral histories. Communities responded to socio-political and environmental risk by reconfiguring social connections and migrating to areas of greater resource availability or political security.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10444161
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Antiquity
- ISSN:
- 0003-598X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 17
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)This paper reports on social research investigating perceptions concerning the diversion of urine from the waste stream and its use as fertilizer in two study regions, New England and the Upper Midwest. We hypothesized that discomfort or disgust might affect acceptance of such a shift in human “waste” management. However, our findings suggest that a more significant concern of those potentially involved in this process may be distrust of how economic interests influence scientific and technical information. Both physical risks (to the environment and public health) and socio-political risks (to fragile farm economies and consumer communities) play out at individual, household, regional, and global scales. We describe the intersection of these complex understandings as nested risks and responsibilities that must inform the future of urine reclamation. Our respondents' shared concern about environmental risks has already galvanized communities to take responsibility for implementing closed-loop alternatives to current agricultural inputs and waste management practices in their communities. Attention to these nested understandings of both risk and responsibility should shape research priorities and foster participatory approaches to urine nutrient reclamation, including strategies for education, planning, regulation, technology design, and agricultural application.more » « less
-
Participatory modeling (PM) is an engaged research methodology for creating analog or computer-based models of complex systems, such as socio–environmental systems. Used across a range of fields, PM centers stakeholder knowledge and participation to create more internally valid models that can inform policy and increase engagement and trust between communities and research teams. The PM process also presents opportunities for knowledge co-production and eliciting cross-sectional and longitudinal data on stakeholders’ worldviews and knowledge, risk assessment, decision-making, and social learning. We present an overview of the stages for PM and how it can be used for community-based, stakeholder-engaged social science research.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Moving toward a sustainable global society requires substantial change in both social and technological systems. This sustainability is dependent not only on addressing the environmental impacts of current social and technological systems, but also on addressing the social, economic and political harms that continue to be perpetuated through systematic forms of oppression and the exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. To adequately identify and address these harms, we argue that scientists, practitioners, and communities need a transdisciplinary framework that integrates multiple types of knowledge, in particular, Indigenous and experiential knowledge. Indigenous knowledge systems embrace relationality and reciprocity rather than extraction and oppression, and experiential knowledge grounds transition priorities in lived experiences rather than expert assessments. Here, we demonstrate how an Indigenous, experiential, and community-based participatory framework for understanding and advancing socio-technological system transitions can facilitate the co-design and co-development of community-owned energy systems.more » « less
-
The Lake Urmia vignette: a tool to assess understanding of complexity in socio‐environmental systemsAbstract We introduce the Lake Urmia Vignette (LUV) as a tool to assess individuals' understanding of complexity in socio‐environmental systems. LUV is based on a real‐world case and includes a short vignette describing an environmental catastrophe involving a lake. Over a few decades, significant issues have manifested themselves at the lake because of various social, political, economic, and environmental factors. We design a rubric for assessing responses to a prompt. A pilot test with a sample of 30 engineering graduate students is conducted. We compare responses to LUV with other measures. Our findings suggest that students' understanding of complexity is positively associated with their understanding of systems concepts such as feedback loops but not with other possible variables such as self‐reported systems thinking skills or systems‐related coursework. Based on the provided instructions, researchers can use LUV as a novel assessment tool to examine understanding of complexity in socio‐environmental systems. © 2020 System Dynamics Societymore » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.123
