Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Responding to change using scenarios to understand how socioeconomic factors may influence amplifying or dampening exploitation feedbacks among Tanzanian fishers
AU - Cinner, Joshua E.
AU - Folke, Carl
AU - Daw, Tim
AU - Hicks, Christina C.
PY - 2011/2
Y1 - 2011/2
N2 - Environmental change often requires societies to adapt. In some instances, these adaptations can create feedbacks that amplify the change. Alternatively, other adaptations may dampen the change. We used semi-structured interviews with 240 fishers from nine Tanzanian coastal communities to explore responses to four hypothetical scenarios of increasingly severe declines in their average catch (10%, 20%, 30% and 50%). Overall, a higher proportion of fishers said they would respond to decline using amplifying adaptations (such as fishing harder) than dampening adaptations (such as reducing effort), particularly in the scenarios with lower levels of decline. We used a redundancy analysis to explore whether certain types of responses were related to the fishers' socioeconomic characteristics. Fishers that would employ amplifying responses had greater economic wealth but lacked options. Fishers who would adopt dampening responses possessed characteristics associated with having livelihood options. Fishers who would adopt neither amplifying nor dampening responses were less likely to belong to community groups and sold the largest proportion of their catch. This study provides novel contributions by differentiating aspects of adaptive capacity that will amplify versus dampen environmental change and by highlighting what the resource users' themselves say regarding responding to environmental change. Although direct policy application is limited by the study's hypothetical scenario nature, it provides a good beginning to incorporating resource users' voices into such policy discussions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
AB - Environmental change often requires societies to adapt. In some instances, these adaptations can create feedbacks that amplify the change. Alternatively, other adaptations may dampen the change. We used semi-structured interviews with 240 fishers from nine Tanzanian coastal communities to explore responses to four hypothetical scenarios of increasingly severe declines in their average catch (10%, 20%, 30% and 50%). Overall, a higher proportion of fishers said they would respond to decline using amplifying adaptations (such as fishing harder) than dampening adaptations (such as reducing effort), particularly in the scenarios with lower levels of decline. We used a redundancy analysis to explore whether certain types of responses were related to the fishers' socioeconomic characteristics. Fishers that would employ amplifying responses had greater economic wealth but lacked options. Fishers who would adopt dampening responses possessed characteristics associated with having livelihood options. Fishers who would adopt neither amplifying nor dampening responses were less likely to belong to community groups and sold the largest proportion of their catch. This study provides novel contributions by differentiating aspects of adaptive capacity that will amplify versus dampen environmental change and by highlighting what the resource users' themselves say regarding responding to environmental change. Although direct policy application is limited by the study's hypothetical scenario nature, it provides a good beginning to incorporating resource users' voices into such policy discussions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KW - Adaptation
KW - Adaptive capacity
KW - Coral reef
KW - Fishery
KW - Social resilience
KW - Social-ecological system
KW - Vulnerability
KW - ECOLOGICAL-SYSTEMS
KW - ENVIRONMENTAL-CHANGE
KW - RESOURCE-MANAGEMENT
KW - ADAPTIVE CAPACITY
KW - SOCIAL TRAPS
KW - RURAL INDIA
KW - RISK
KW - RESILIENCE
KW - ADAPTATION
KW - ATTITUDES
U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.09.001
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.09.001
M3 - Journal article
VL - 21
SP - 7
EP - 12
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
SN - 0959-3780
IS - 1
ER -