Livelihood Diversification Through Tourism: Identity, Well-Being, and Potential in Rural Coastal Communities

Traditional rural livelihoods are disappearing due to natural resource decline, climate pressure and, also modernization. This study explores livelihood diversification from primary economic activities into tourism employment in rural communities. We examine the developmental role of tourism in areas where traditional activities, in this case fishing, have declined and tourism is growing. This article presents the findings of two case studies: the coastal communities of Padstow (UK) and Paternoster (South Africa). The approach is qualitative and draws on sustainable livelihoods and social well-being notions to examine how affected people “cope with change” with respect to tourism diversification, and individual and community well-being. While the socioeconomic and sociopolitical contexts in the two research sites differ, the findings show that narratives about belonging and identity feature prominently with respect to fishing livelihoods in both cases. Small-scale fishing, perceived as a way of life for fishers, is under threat in both areas, yet there is limited evidence of concerted efforts to plan and manage the potential diversification processes into tourism. Nonetheless, we observe that tourism does provide some opportunities for fishing-dependent communities and outline some avenues for stronger collaboration, particularly by focusing on culinary tourism.

Environmental Change and Livelihood Activities in Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands of Yobe State, North East Nigeria

The Hadejia-Nguru wetlands is an extensive area of flood plains located in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of north east Nigeria. The population rely heavily on natural resources for their livelihoods. In recent years, climatic vagaries, increasing populations and unregulated livelihood activities have significantly affected water and other resources availability and communities are faced with constant struggle of survival under a declining resource base. This study assessed the adverse effects of environmental change on resource users and how this influences their livelihood options. Understanding the perceptions, knowledge and practices of local resource users and what shapes their livelihood options is an area of critical importance that is currently under-researched in the area. This paper argues that to effectively influence policy and practice that support sustainable use of natural resources, it is important to not only understand resource user's knowledge and choices about their changing environment but how they utilize this knowledge in their actions and the overall impact on the environment. Mixed methods consisting of semi-structured questionnaire and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) based on two Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools (Village Timeline and Contextual Change) were utilized to solicit primary data. Environmental change in the area is accelerated by human activities and people have developed several local mechanisms of adapting to change. These adaptive measures could further be explored for developing policies and programs aimed at tackling the challenges of environmental change and resource decline.

Internal and External Resources of the Lifestyle Leaders

With older age, people experience declines in resources and face new challenges. The goal of this study was to understand how resource decline affects the oldest olds’ well-being, but also to learn who they trust and where they go for advice in areas such as health, finances, and technology. This sample of 30 participants between the ages of 85 and 95 was generally resource-rich, scoring highest on self-esteem and optimism and lowest on mastery. Self-esteem and optimism correlated with financial resources, indicating a significant role of finances in this rather wealthy sample. Well-being was predicted by self-esteem and physical health. Presumably, their high levels of self-esteem compensate for the loss of other resources among the oldest old. The majority of lifestyle leaders trust in other people, and while friends and family are very important sources of advice, searching online was equally often mentioned as a source when looking for advice.

Climate change cumulative impacts on deep-sea ecosystems

Climate models report that the environmental changes resulting from excess CO2 and heat absorption by the ocean already reach many deep-ocean margins, basins, and seas. Decadal monitoring programmes have confirmed significant warming and deoxygenation trends down to the abyss, which combine with CO2-enriched, more corrosive conditions. Although the resolution of current models does not account for the typical mesoscale seafloor heterogeneity, cumulative impacts on biodiversity and productivity hotpots are anticipated. The growing interest in deep-sea resource exploitation has shed light on the lack of knowledge about current climate-driven disturbance and potential cumulative threats at great depth. Assessing the sensitivity of deep-sea ecosystems to temperature increase combined with oxygen and resource decline is emerging as a growing challenge. The natural patchiness of deep-seafloor habitats and associated deep-sea diversity patterns inform about environmental constraints over space, but the temporal dynamics of these systems is not well known. Experimental studies are required to assess the physiological limits and explore the adaptation and acclimation potential of foundation species exposed to various forms of abiotic stress. The case of cold-water corals is particularly illustrative of the potential synergistic effects of climate stressors, including warming, acidification, deoxygation, and reduced food availability. Addressing ecosystem vulnerability also requires dedicated monitoring efforts to identify the current and future drivers of climate-change impacts on deep-sea habitats. United Nations policy objectives for protected high-sea biodiversity and healthy oceans and seas drive the momentum towards better climate-change forecasting over the ocean-depth range and related integrated observing strategies.

Architectural traits constrain the evolution of unisexual flowers and sexual segregation within inflorescences: an interspecific approach

ABSTRACTMale and female unisexual flowers have repeatedly evolved from the ancestral bisexual flowers in different lineages of flowering plants. This sex specialization in different flowers often occurs within inflorescences. We hypothesize that inflorescence architecture may impose a constraint on resource availability for late flowers, potentially leading to different optima in floral sex allocation and unisexuality. Under this hypothesis we expect that inflorescence traits increasing the difference in resource availability between early and late flowers would be phylogenetically correlated with a higher level of sexual specialization. To test this hypothesis, we performed a comparative analysis of inflorescence traits (inflorescence size, number of flowers and flower density) in the sunflower family, which displays an extraordinary variation in floral sexual specialization at the inflorescence level, i.e. hermaphroditic, gynomonoecious and monoecious species. We found that species with a complete sex separation in unisexual flowers (monoecy) had significantly denser inflorescences. Furthermore, those species arranging their flowers in denser inflorescences also showed greater differences in the size of early and late fruits, a proxy of resource variation between flowers. Our findings support the idea that floral sexual specialization and consequently sexual segregation may be the consequence of different floral sex allocation optima driven by the sequential development of flowers that results in a persistent resource decline from earlier to later flowers.

Government Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior Amid Organizational Resource Decline: Can They Work More With Less?

Based on the implication of the job demands–resources (JD-R) model, this study examined the associations between job demands (organizational resource declines and work overload) and resources (job-goal specificity, performance feedback, and work unit climate) with employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Although statistically significant negative associations were found between financial and human resource decline and OCB, the associations were weak from a practical perspective. In line with the JD-R model, this study also found that job-goal specificity, performance feedback, and work supervisor support had positive associations with OCB. However, the effect of work overload was found to be marginalized, and the expected buffering role of job resources on the negative association of work overload with OCB was not confirmed in this study.