How Subsistence Communities Reconfigure Livelihood Systems in Response to Climate Change: A Coupled-Systems Perspective

A defining societal challenge in the era of climate change is ensuring consumption adequacy in subsistence communities. To understand the intricacies of this challenge, we have conducted an ethnographic study of a low-income community that relies on subsistence fishing to maintain consumption adequacy. Based on our data analysis, we advance a conceptualization of subsistence livelihood systems that models the tight coupling among its three constituent subsystems: the market system, the social system, and the environmental system. These three subsystems are highly interdependent and operate in concert to maintain consumption adequacy. We then show how climate change-induced environmental disruptions threaten consumption adequacy by disequilibrating livelihood systems in subsistence settings, as well as unpack the self-directed adaptation and mitigation strategies employed by the community in response to the threat of consumption inadequacy. These response strategies create feedback loops to either preserve or attenuate the tight coupling among the three subsystems.

The Estuarine Ecological Knowledge Network: Future Prospects

Estuaries are profoundly rich, diverse, and complex ecosystems, and crucial to the overall health of Earth's oceans. Estuarine ecological complexity is matched by tremendous human cultural diversity. In the United States, millions of people live in estuarine environments from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic—many of whom directly depend on the productivity of marine resources in both commercial and subsistence fishing activities. Yet, estuaries are also among Earth's most threatened landscapes against the backdrop of global warming, sea-level rise, agricultural and industrial pollution, habitat loss, overfishing, and so on. This represents a looming disaster for our oceans at a global scale. The Estuarine Ecological Knowledge Network (EEKN) is based on the idea that fishing communities living within major estuaries are the key to ensuring the health of global oceans. Coastal fishing communities have vast accumulations of ecological knowledge about the functioning of estuarine ecosystems and interact with those ecosystems in intimate ways on a daily basis. This network is designed to connect coastal communities in monitoring the health of estuarine ecosystems and in using traditional ecological knowledge to develop strategies for enhancing ecosystem health and resilience.

Socioeconomic and productive marine and estuarine fishery activity potential index

Considering the need for increased productivity, consequently providing a safe source of quality food and economic sustenance for numerous families, fishing in the State of Rio de Janeiro is configured in an important way, and with a primarily artisanal and professional nature of small bearing. In addition to the fundamental aspect of human subsistence, fishing is an important economic activity, generating several other businesses and income for other economic sectors, such as transport, storage, processing and sale of products, construction and repair of vessels, and construction of artifacts and utensils, among others. Thus, the study of potentialities and vulnerabilities involving the strengths and weaknesses of the coastal region of Rio de Janeiro will assist in actions in favor of a broad development of activity in the coastal municipalities. For this, the analytic hierarchy process was used, a multicriteria analysis method, to construct hierarchies of these municipalities in terms of potential development, and thus the analysis of the environment was performed using a matrix to analyze the scenarios. The results point out that due to the importance accorded by the interviewees to the economic sub-index, the municipality of Angra dos Reis stood out in the order of priority of defining the municipality with the highest socioeconomic and productive potentiality index for fishing activity, presenting quantitative data related to sub-indices of greater importance than the other municipalities. However, when the analysis for each subscript was carried out separately, Angra dos Reis has the lowest classification for vulnerability to environmental and social issues.

Patterns of seagrass macrobenthic biodiversity in the warm-temperate Knysna estuarine bay, Western Cape: a review

Knysna estuarine bay in South Africa's Garden Route National Park is that country's most significant estuarine system for biodiversity and conservation value. One outstanding feature is support of 40% of South Africa's—and maybe 20% of the world's—remaining vulnerable and decreasing dwarf-eelgrass, Zostera capensis, whose associated benthic macrofauna has been studied since 2009. For these invertebrates, Knysna comprises several significantly different compartments: sandy mouth; well-flushed marine embayment; poorly flushed central sea-water 'lagoon'; and two disjunct but faunistically similar peripheral regions–marine backwater channels, and low-salinity upper estuary. Although macrofauna ranges from dilute brackish to fully marine, its abundance, local patchiness, and over considerable stretches, species density remains remarkably constant; further, one-third of species occur throughout. Intertidally, all but peripheral compartments are low density and infaunally dominated, while some peripheral areas, and much of the subtidal, are higher density and epifaunally dominated. Overall, seagrass macrobenthos appears maintained below carrying capacity (e.g., by abundant juvenile fish) and of random species composition within a site. Two further characteristics are notable: Unusually, seagrass supports fewer animals than adjacent unvegetated areas, probably because of lack of bioturbatory disturbance in them, and the vegetation cover may ameliorate ambient habitat conditions. Unfortunately, continual heavy and effectively unpreventable exploitation for bait occurs, and chlorophyte blooms have developed because of high nutrient input. Knysna presents a microcosm of problems facing biodiverse and high-value habitats set within areas of high unemployment where subsistence fishing provides the main source of protein and seagrass provides the only source of bait.

Assessing Assemblage Composition of Reproductively Mature Resource Fishes at a Community Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA)

Nearshore fisheries in Hawai‘i have been steadily decreasing for over a century. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been utilized as a method to both conserve biodiversity and enhance fisheries. The composition of resource fishes within and directly outside of the recently established Hā‘ena Community Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA) on the island of Kaua‘i were assessed to determine temporal and spatial patterns in assemblage structure. In situ visual surveys of fishes, invertebrates, and benthos were conducted using a stratified random sampling design to evaluate the efficacy of the MPA between 2016 and 2020. L50 values—defined as the size at which half of the individuals in a population have reached reproductive maturity—were used as proxies for identifying reproductively mature resource fishes both inside and outside the CBSFA. Surveys between 2016 and 2020 did not indicate strong temporal or spatial changes in overall resource fish assemblage structure; however, some species-specific changes were evident. Although overall resource species diversity and richness were significantly higher by 2020 inside the MPA boundaries, there is currently no strong evidence for a reserve effect.

ON DIGNITY, VULNERABILITY, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND FISHERFOLKS: CHILEAN SUBSISTENCE FISHING ACCORDING TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS

Subsistence fishing is a confusing and heterogeneous fishery construct. Even so, its connection to human protection compels us to analyze it through the lens of human rights. Using the case of Chile due to its legal peculiarities, we aim to determine the scope of the Chilean legislation on subsistence fishing, integrating international treaties on human rights, case law, and reports from United Nations agencies regarding three issues. First, we examine how the Chilean legislation relates to the right to food and the promotion of decent social conditions. Next, we explain why the prohibition of riggings and propulsion enables us to identify economically precarious users and how this prohibition is related to vulnerabilities and poverty as human rights concepts. Finally, we show how the property of indigenous peoples and the culture of fisherfolk populations could impose their inclusion and preferences in access to subsistence fishing resources. Considering the results, we hold that human rights help to clarify the understanding of it and propose partial amendments to the Chilean legislation on subsistence fishing. But, above all, they introduce protection standards that allow us to see such legislation not as a mere derivation of state privilege, but as an attempt to foster a situation of equality: an affirmative action. We conclude by presenting a conceptual approach for Chilean subsistence fishing, suggesting that it could help to unveil new objectives and rights in fishing, and even influence the understanding of natural resource allocation.