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 -