The ambiguous impacts of alternative livelihoods on fisher wellbeing in a closed access fish sanctuary in Port Antonio, Jamaica

Alternative livelihood programs are a central feature of contemporary conservation planning that aim to aid efforts to reduce pressure on natural resources and avoid, minimize, or mitigate the impacts of conservation on the wellbeing of local stakeholders. Evidence of the effectiveness of these programs is, however, decidedly mixed. This research examines the relationship between livelihoods, conservation, and wellbeing among nearshore fishers in Port Antonio, Jamaica, in the context of a recently established marine no-take area. The East Portland Fish Sanctuary was established in 2016 with the aim of supporting the recovery of depleted nearshore fish stocks, marine habitats, and mitigating impacts on local communities and fishers through a range of activities. Mitigation of impacts included efforts to shift pressure from overexploited nearshore fish stocks to offshore resources and to provide support to fishers for training and opportunities to earn income in the tourism sector. The results suggest that additional sources of income tended to enhance the wellbeing of fishers across several dimensions but that it also contributed to additional pressure on nearshore resources. Furthermore, neither tourism nor offshore fishing appear to be particularly promising in terms of their ability to deliver “win-win” outcomes for conservation and wellbeing. Instead, the results suggest that the impacts of different types of alternative livelihoods on conservation and wellbeing are highly variable and perhaps that efforts should be redirected to supporting efforts to provide suitable and acceptable alternatives to spearfishing which appears to have one of the largest overall impacts on individual harvest rates.

Factors Affecting Fishers’ Attitude and Willingness to use Cage Aquaculture as an Alternative Livelihood for Reducing Fishing Pressure in Haor Areas, Bangladesh

Inland capture fisheries are providing cost of livings of about 1.2 million BDT in Bangladesh. However, overexploitation causes the declination of the abundance of native fish species which adversely affects the livelihoods of haor dwellers. The present study was conducted in two haor villages (Sutarpara and Changnoagaon) of Kishoreganj, Bangladesh to explore the factors (economic and non-economic) affecting fishers’ attitude and willingness about cage aquaculture considered as livelihood alternative for reducing fishing pressure. The methodologies applied to do this study were semi-structured face-to-face interview, key informants and questionnaire survey using Likert scale (LS), focus group discussions (FGD). The result revealed that willingness to switch from traditional way of fishing to cage aquaculture activities was significantly (p<0.05) higher in those fishers’ groups that had more inclination in fishing activities. Simultaneously, non-economic factors like powerful traders and fishers, traditional belief, taking risk, launching period of cage aquaculture venture and investment duration played vital role in decisions on whether to fish or not. The economic factors were fewer in number than non-economic factors. This comparative research is significantly important for future social aquaculture researchers as well as the country policy makers for giving emphasis to gather data based on the prevailing economic and non-economic factors to innovate alternative livelihood activity concurrently.

Empowerment of Riverside Communities in Sustainable Environmental Management (Study in Petuk Katimpun Village, Jekan Raya District, Palangka Raya City)

This study aims to analyze the empowerment of people who live and settle on the banks of the river in Petuk Katimpun Village, Jekan Raya District, Palangka Raya City, especially in stunting prevention efforts. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 10 key informants who were considered to have distinctive characters. The data collected were analyzed by qualitative methods. The results of this study illustrate that there is a model in empowering riverbank communities because the character of the people who live on the banks of the river has its own characteristics and plus generally are Dayak ethnicities, people who live on the banks of the river are very dependent on all the potential of the river and its surroundings, especially in the field of fisheries with the karamba method. and the fish produced are partly a source of nutrition, then also by utilizing purun plants as their alternative livelihood. Then the position of the house on stilts occupied also affects the fisheries sector they manage. On the other hand, the flood impact caused losses to the fish seeds that were developed because they came from fertilizer residue from oil palm plantations upstream.

Community, Forest Carbon & Indigeneity: A Case Study of the Loru Project in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

<p>Forest carbon farming offers customary landowners an alternative livelihood to socially and environmentally unsustainable logging, through the sale of carbon offset credits. REDD+, the global forest carbon scheme to address deforestation in developing countries, has attracted scholarly criticism for the risks it poses to communities. Critics warn that REDD+: (1) benefits may be captured by elites, (2) threatens forest-dependent livelihoods, (3) reduces local forest governance, and (4) a results-based payments mechanism can undermine conservation. Community-owned forest carbon farming may mitigate these risks by empowering communities to manage forest resources locally. The Loru project in Vanuatu is the first of its kind, and Indigenous landowners legally own the carbon rights and manage the carbon project. This thesis examines the community ownership and the social impact of the Loru project on its Indigenous project owners, the ni-Vanuatu Ser clan. The thesis uses a ‘semi’-mixed-methods approach, based primarily on interviews conducted in in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu with Indigenous landowners and supplemented with quantitative data from a monitoring exercise conducted by the author. Grounded in social constructivism, the thesis makes a genuine attempt to decolonize the research process, adopting a self-reflexive approach. The research finds that the project is leading to positive social and economic impacts at the community level. Further, the Loru project is legitimately community-owned and driven, meaning it adapts effectively to the local context. Overall, the findings suggest that implementing REDD+ through a multi-scalar institutional network and building local capacity could mitigate the risks of REDD+ to forest communities.</p>

Community, Forest Carbon & Indigeneity: A Case Study of the Loru Project in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

<p>Forest carbon farming offers customary landowners an alternative livelihood to socially and environmentally unsustainable logging, through the sale of carbon offset credits. REDD+, the global forest carbon scheme to address deforestation in developing countries, has attracted scholarly criticism for the risks it poses to communities. Critics warn that REDD+: (1) benefits may be captured by elites, (2) threatens forest-dependent livelihoods, (3) reduces local forest governance, and (4) a results-based payments mechanism can undermine conservation. Community-owned forest carbon farming may mitigate these risks by empowering communities to manage forest resources locally. The Loru project in Vanuatu is the first of its kind, and Indigenous landowners legally own the carbon rights and manage the carbon project. This thesis examines the community ownership and the social impact of the Loru project on its Indigenous project owners, the ni-Vanuatu Ser clan. The thesis uses a ‘semi’-mixed-methods approach, based primarily on interviews conducted in in Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu with Indigenous landowners and supplemented with quantitative data from a monitoring exercise conducted by the author. Grounded in social constructivism, the thesis makes a genuine attempt to decolonize the research process, adopting a self-reflexive approach. The research finds that the project is leading to positive social and economic impacts at the community level. Further, the Loru project is legitimately community-owned and driven, meaning it adapts effectively to the local context. Overall, the findings suggest that implementing REDD+ through a multi-scalar institutional network and building local capacity could mitigate the risks of REDD+ to forest communities.</p>

Impact of Ecotourism on Local Community’s Participation in Coastal Resource Management: Case of Palaui Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (PIPLS) in Northern Luzon, Philippines

The establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) managed by the community has been a popular tool for coastal and resource management in the Philippines. As the MPAs limit the use of the resources, the eco-biological components of the marine environment have been preserved and maintained, which opened opportunities for ecotourism activities. Thus, ecotourism has been developed as one way of gaining economic benefits from the coastal and marine resources while conserving biodiversity and restoring critical habitats by shifting resource exploitation from an extractive to a non-extractive usage. This study was conducted using household surveys and key informant interviews to investigate whether ecotourism's development affects the local community's participation and support on MPA management using the case of Palaui Island Protected Landscape and Seascape (PIPLS) in northern Luzon, Philippines. The respondents recognized the impacts of ecotourism on their family welfare, fishing activities, and involvement in MPA management. In particular, ecotourism development strengthens local communities' support for coastal resource management, especially if it provides enough sources of income. The results of this study could provide information to resource managers and policymakers on crafting sustainable ecotourism and alternative livelihood policies in MPAs, taking into account its possible impacts on the coastal fishing communities.

Immigration Policy and the Rise of Self-Employment among Mexican Immigrants

The recent dramatic growth in self-employment among Mexican immigrants in the United States in the past two decades is a puzzling trend, in stark contrast to the stagnant growth or even decline among other demographic groups. The authors propose that the expansion of interior immigration enforcement, a characteristic of the US immigration policy during that time span, contributed to this unique trend by pushing Mexican immigrants into self-employment as an alternative livelihood. Exploiting temporal and geographic variation in immigration enforcement measures from 2005 to 2017, the authors show that tougher enforcement has been responsible for approximately 15% of the rise in Mexican self-employment in the United States.

The impact of community capacity building on forest management at Paru Village Forest, Sijunjung Regency, West Sumatera

The management of Paru Village Forest in Sijunjung Regency, West Sumatera, has not been optimal, resulting in the low economic value of the farm products and relatively weak bargaining position of the farmers. Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO), in collaboration with Forest Research and Development Center, facilitated training through technology transfer to increase farmer’s capacity in forest management; post-harvest product processing; and alternative livelihood development in Paru Village Forest located in Sijunjung Protected Forest Management Unit since 2016 until 2020 to overcome the situation. The study aimed to evaluate the impact of facilitation on increasing the community’s capacity in forest management, post-harvest product processing, and alternative livelihood development. Data collection was carried out by interviewing 34 respondents, selected purposively using semi-structured questionnaires. Collected data and information were analyzed descriptively by comparing before and after situations. The results showed that after AFoCO facilitation, the community’s interaction with the forest has increased by 26.47%. The total number of farmers farming in the forest increased by 16.14%. The study also revealed that AFoCO facilitation had created new alternative sources of income having forward and backward linkage, as well as access to network marketing, thereby increasing the product selling price and marketing reach.

Community-Based Tourism as a Strategy for Building Climate Resilience in Bhutan

Governments in developing countries are exploring numerous ways to respond to climate change and build resilient communities and in this chapter, we examine if community tourism can be one of the alternative livelihoods. We examine the benefit of community tourism on rural poor in Bhutan using household census data from 2017. We compare households from the sub-districts that received community tourism with the households from the sub-districts that did not. We use propensity score matching methods to make sure that other than the presence or absence of community tourism programs; these villages are similar in observed characteristics. The results show that households from the sub-districts that received the community tourism programmes are 10% more likely to have more than the average number of rooms in their homes (i.e. 4 rooms) and about 5% more likely to own a vehicle. Most of the tourism initiatives in Bhutan are promoted in protected areas, and thus, it is likely that households’ dependence on the natural environment (like forest and water bodies) may reduce. Further, based on this evidence, it is also likely that community tourism may not only help poor households in terms of enhancing household income, but it may also provide alternative livelihood options in the poor villages where opportunities are limited.

Fishermen Adaptation to Climate Change in Mertasinga Village, Gunungjati Sub-District, Cirebon Regency

This study aims to determine the adaptation carried out by the fishermen of Mertasinga Village in facing climate change. The population of the study was 2,025 fishermen in Mertasinga Village, and a sample of 102 fishermen was taken using a proportional random sampling technique. Data were collected using observation, interviews, and documentation. Data were analyzed using the interactive analysis model from Miles and Huberman. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that climate change has an impact on fishing activities that require fishermen to adapt. In fact, they have adapted to climate change even though the used technology is still quite minimal; fishermen have not developed a ship, have not used weather information and maps of fish catchment areas from the BMKG, and have not used fish tracking devices. Carrying out continuous socialization, strengthening social capital and organizational capacity, and holding various trainings concerning on alternative livelihood are greatly essential to do.