Seafood is one of the most internationally-traded food commodities. International markets can provide higher revenues that benefit small-scale fishing communities but can also drive a decline in fished populations. Collective action in collective organizations such as fishing cooperatives is thought to enhance the sustainability of fished populations. However, our knowledge of how collective action enables fishing cooperatives to achieve positive social-ecological outcomes is dispersed across case studies. Here, we present a quantitative, national-level analysis exploring the relationship between different levels of collective action and social-ecological outcomes. We found that strong collective action in Mexican lobster cooperatives was related to both sustaining their fisheries and benefiting from international trade. In the 15 year study period, lobster cooperatives that demonstrate characteristics associated with strong collective action captured benefits from trade through high catch volumes and revenue. Despite lower (but stable) average prices, the biomass of their lobster populations was not compromised to reap these benefits. Individual case studies previously found that fishing cooperatives can support both positive social and ecological outcomes in small-scale fisheries. Our results confirm these findings at a national level and highlight the importance of strong collective action. Thus, our work contributes to a better understanding of the governance arrangements to promote fishing communities’ welfare and benefits from international trade and, therefore, will be invaluable to advancing small-scale fisheries governance.
As a society, we are confronted with the question of how best to feed an expanding human population, and some have pointed to seafood as a “climate‐friendly” option. To date, the contributions of small‐scale fisheries (SSFs) have been largely excluded from studies on food footprint. Here, we calculated the Emission Intensity profiles for seven seafood types generated by Mexican SSFs. Based on these results—which indicate that there exist several low‐carbon SSFs in Northwestern Mexico—we provide a coarse approximation for the total carbon footprint of Mexico’s motorized small‐scale fleet. Finally, we scrutinize the utility of non‐fuel data (such as GPS data) in predicting fuel consumption/carbon emissions across SSFs. To our knowledge, this is the first life‐cycle assessment to compare multiple seafood products generated by Mexican SSFs, and the first published link between tracking data and carbon accounting for SSFs specifically. We discuss how these results, in combination with insights gained from monitoring efforts in Northwestern Mexico, might be used to inform and incentivize “climate‐friendly” fisheries management. While carbon footprint represents just one component of sustainability, this article serves as a helpful case study for those preoccupied with carbon accounting and fishers sustainability in traditionally data‐limited scenarios.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10450879
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Fisheries
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0363-2415
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 277-287
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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