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October 2007 - October 2013
Publications
Publications (115)
Marine protected areas like periodic closures are increasingly used to improve both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation, and often secondarily, human well‐being. Yet rule breaking, whether formal regulations, or community‐agreed norms, continues to negate expected management and conservation outcomes, remaining a major challenge.
Alt...
Our study of periodic octopus closures helps to fill an empirical gap in community-based marine protected area (MPA) research on socially-diverse multidimensional wellbeing impacts. Human wellbeing provides a more meaningful and holistic measure of social impacts than previous economic measures while recognising equity- evidence that ultimately ens...
Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets compri...
Local access to ‘‘wild,’’ common-pool terrestrial and aquatic resources is being diminished by global
resource demand and large-scale conservation interventions. Many theories suggest the well-being of
wild harvesters can be supported through transitions to other livelihoods, improved infrastructure, and market
access. However, new theories argue t...
This paper investigates multidimensional human wellbeing in periodic octopus closures, a common type of marine protected area (MPA) in the western Indian ocean. We trace the perceived flow of benefits, costs and trade-offs from closures at three sites in Zanzibar. We specifically explore how different types of fishers and traders perceive the impac...
Breaking of rules, whether formal regulations, or community agreed norms, remains one of the most widespread challenges to sustainable use of marine ecosystems. Non-compliance is especially difficult in small-scale fisheries as it can undermine the provision of nutrition and livelihoods to the many millions dependent worldwide. Although fishery com...
The blue economy is being promoted as capable of achieving sustainability and prosperity, fair use of the ocean and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ensuring a more equitable distribution of goods and services provided by the ocean represents a major challenge. There is overwhelming evidence that current access to ocean benefits and res...
The ocean is important for everyone—it produces oxygen and food, stores carbon and heat, offers space for economic activities and recreation, and continues to inspire and support culture and well-being. Globally, the value of key ocean assets has been estimated at US$24 trillion and the value of derived services at between $1.5 trillion and $6 tril...
Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich¹, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats², and contribute to the health³, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities...
Private actors have become prominent players in the work to drive social and environmental sustainability transitions. In the fisheries sector, fishery improvement projects (FIPs) aim to address environmental challenges by leveraging the capacity of industry actors and using value chains to incentivize change. Despite globally rising FIP numbers, t...
Evidence-informed decision-making is in increasing demand given growing pressures on marine environments. A way to facilitate this is by knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decision-makers. While many barriers are reported in the literature, there are also examples whereby research has successfully informed marine decision-making (i.e.,...
Expansion of aquaculture in the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) is irreversibly replacing agricultural land and the drivers of this change are disputed. Based on in-depth interviews with 67 aquaculture farmers, this paper characterizes major aquaculture types in the SBR, their impacts, and identifies drivers of conversion from agricultural land....
Securing well-being and building resilience in response to shocks are often viewed as key goals of sustainable development. Here, we present an overview of the latest published evidence, as well as the consensus of a diverse group of scientists and practitioners drawn from a structured analytical review and deliberative workshop process. We argue t...
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their corresponding targets are significantly interconnected, with many interactions, synergies, and trade-offs between individual goals across multiple temporal and spatial scales. This paper proposes a framework for the Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) of a complex deltaic socio-eco...
People perceive the importance of benefits from ecosystem services in different ways, depending on their values, beliefs, and needs. Acknowledging and integrating this diversity into decision-making processes can support informed natural resource management. Our empirical study unpicks the multiple ways stakeholder groups perceive the benefits deri...
Anthropogenic and ecological impacts affect not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the fishers and communities reliant on them. It is, therefore, crucial to study the entire chain of well-being for an ecosystem, from changing environmental conditions, to the impacts of humans and social processes, to the effect of high-level policies...
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promote sustainable development and aim to address multiple challenges including those related to poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation. Interlinkages between SDGS means there is potential for interactions, synergies and trade-offs between individual goals a...
The ocean is important for everyone—it produces oxygen and food, stores carbon and heat, offers space for economic activities and recreation, and continues to inspire and support culture and well-being. Globally, the value of key ocean assets has been estimated at US$24 trillion and the value of derived services at between $1.5 trillion and $6 tril...
This paper examines the distribution of the goods and services provided by the ocean, existing inequities and the resulting impacts on the environment, human health, and income distribution now and in the future.
The paper outlines the tensions and trade-offs, and presents recommendations for addressing some of the underlying and systemic features...
The sustainable governance and management of small-scale fisheries (SSF) is challenging, largely due to their dynamic and complex nature. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a computational modeling approach that can account for the dynamism and complexity in SSF by modeling entities as individual agents with different characteristics and behavior, and s...
Sustainability science has increasingly adopted more action-oriented approaches in an attempt to mobilise and implement a broad knowledge base to sustain human wellbeing and promote sustainable development. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of knowledge exchange (KE) between scientists and end users of research for enhancing soci...
The sustainable governance and management of small-scale fisheries (SSF) is challenging, largely due to their dynamic and complex nature. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a computational modeling approach that can account for the dynamism and complexity in SSF by modeling entities as individual agents with different characteristics and behavior, and s...
Small-scale fishing communities are increasingly connected to international seafood trade via exports in a growing global market. Understanding how this connectedness impacts local fishery systems, both socially and ecologically, has become a necessary challenge for fishery governance. Market prices are a potential mechanism by which global market...
Despite extensive recent research elucidating the complex relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing, little work has sought to understand how ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing and poverty alleviation. This paper adopts concepts from the "Theory of Human Need" and the "Capability Approach" to both identify the multitude of...
Non-technical summary
We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature – for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty – feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these...
Non-technical summary
We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature – for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty – feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these...
Since the late-2000s, there has been a growing discussion around development aid approaches that reflect complexity concepts, such as adaptive and iterative project management. Fisheries development interventions deal with particularly complex realities. They also illustrate the changing problems and prescribed solutions of development “paradigms”...
This final manuscript in the special issue on “Funding for ocean conservation and sustainable fisheries” is the result of a dialogue aimed at connecting lead authors of the special issue manuscripts with relevant policymakers and practitioners. The dialogue took place over the course of a two-day workshop in December 2018, and this “coda” manuscrip...
Fishers’ spatial behavior affects their incomes, livelihoods and ecological sustainability and is affected by establishment of protected areas, and the impacts of changing climate and weather patterns. An understanding of fishers’ spatial behavior is essential for evaluating catch trends or estimating per-area yeilds. Location choice by fishers has...
This article assesses the extent to which our conceptualisation, understanding and empirical analysis of ecosystem services are inherently gendered; in other words, how they might be biased and unbalanced in terms of their appreciation of gender differences. We do this by empirically investigating how women and men are able to benefit from ecosyste...
Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well‐being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade‐offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal wit...
Transformations in social-ecological systems to overturn poverty and ecosystem degradation require approaches to knowledge synthesis that are inclusive and open to creative innovation. We draw on interviews with participants and in-depth process observation of an iterative knowledge cocreation process in Kenya and Mozambique that brought together s...
The connected nature of social-ecological systems has never been more apparent than in today’s globalized world. The ecosystem service framework and associated ecosystem assessments aim to better inform the science–policy response to sustainability challenges. Such assessments, however, often overlook distant, diffuse and delayed impacts that are c...
The connected nature of social-ecological systems has never been more apparent than in today's globalized world. The ecosystem service framework and associated ecosystem assessments aim to better inform the science-policy response to sustainability challenges. Such assessments, however, often overlook distant, diffuse and delayed impacts that are c...
Trade-offs are manifestations of the complex dynamics in interdependent social-ecological systems. Addressing trade-offs involves challenges of perception due to the dynamics of interdependence. We outline the challenges associated with addressing trade-offs and analyze knowledge coproduction as a practice that may contribute to tackling trade-offs...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031460.].
The emerging discipline of sustainability science is focused explicitly on the dynamic interactions between nature and society and is committed to research that spans multiple scales and can support transitions toward greater sustainability. Because a growing body of place-based social-ecological sustainability research (PBSESR) has emerged in rece...
Marine protected areas (MPAs) have historically been implemented and managed in a top-down way, excluding resource-dependent users from planning and management. In response to conflict and non-compliance, the governance of marine resources is increasingly embracing community-based approaches, assuming that by putting communities at the forefront of...
Many nature/natural areas are threatened by economic development and urban expansion. Oftentimes nature is not considered part of the cost/benefit analyses preceding such economic development, and most people find it offensive to price-tag nature. To pit (sacred) nature-values against other monetized values (these are so-called taboo trade-offs) is...
Vulnerability of small-scale fishers in the north coast of Paraná State, Southern Brazil, has been increasing due to a decline in catches and general problems of access to and management of natural resources, associated with biodiversity conservation policies. The predicted effects of climate change will represent an additional source of disturbanc...
Although ecosystem services are increasingly recognized as benefits people obtain from nature, we still have a poor understanding of how they actually enhance multidimensional human well-being, and how well-being is affected by ecosystem change. We develop a concept of "ecosystem service elasticity" (ES elasticity) that describes the sensitivity of...
Participatory scenario planning (PSP) is an increasingly popular tool in place-based environmental research for evaluating alternative futures of social-ecological systems. Although a range of guidelines on PSP methods are available in the scientific and grey literature, there is a need to reflect on existing practices and their appropriate applica...
Reef fisheries are known to be important for food and livelihoods of coastal communities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region. Even for small scale fisheries, fish is highly traded and it is the structure of the marketing system that determines who benefits from this ecosystem service either by eating fish or earning money from selling it. The...
Globalization has increased the speed and flow of people, information, and commodities across space, integrating markets and increasing interdependence of geographically dispersed places worldwide. Places historically driven by largely local forces and market demands are now increasingly affected by drivers at multiple scales. Trade is particularly...
Coastal communities are particularly at risk from the impacts of a changing climate. Building the capacity of coastal communities to cope with and recover from a changing environment is a critical means to reducing their vulnerability. Yet, few studies have quantitatively examined adaptive capacity in such communities. Here, we build on an emerging...
Significance
Environmental management inevitably involves trade-offs among different objectives, values, and stakeholders. Most evaluations of such trade-offs involve monetary valuation or calculation of aggregate production of ecosystem services, which can mask individual winners and losers. We combine a participatory, modeling, and scenarios appr...
Diversity and redundancy in social–ecological system components such as species, landscape types, knowledge systems, actors, cultural groups or institutions provide options for responding to change and disturbance and for dealing with uncertainty and surprise. These options can increase both the reliability of ecosystem services and the potential f...
This is the final report for the Action and highlights its most important activities and accomplishments. The overall objective of the Action was to use an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) framework to improve small-scale fisheries (SSF) management in developing countries, and enhance the important contribution fisheries make to fo...
This is the final report for the Action and highlights its most important activities and accomplishments. The overall objective of the Action was to use an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) framework to improve small-scale fisheries (SSF) management in developing countries, and enhance the important contribution fisheries make to fo...
Nearly 40% of seafood is traded internationally and an even bigger proportion is affected by international trade, yet scholarship on marine fisheries has focused on global trends in stocks and catches, or on dynamics of individual fisheries, with limited attention to the link between individual fisheries, global trade and distant consumers. This pa...
Although gender plays a key role in mediating social relations and livelihood dynamics in fisheries, women's roles have received little attention in many fisheries. Mama karanga are women on the Kenyan coast who buy and process fish for local markets from small-scale fishermen. Mama karanga provide a link between the fishery and poor fish consumers...
Conservationists are increasingly engaging with the concept of human well‐being to improve the design and evaluation of their interventions. Since the convening of the influential Sarkozy Commission in 2009, development researchers have been refining conceptualizations and frameworks to understand and measure human well‐being and are starting to co...
Marine reserves can create both benefits and costs to fishers. This article explores the perceptions of fishers in Kenya and Seychelles about displacement, spillover, and overall impacts of local marine reserves on their livelihoods. We test whether these perceptions are different among fishers from different geographic and socioeconomic conditions...
Over 1.3 billion people live on tropical coasts, primarily in developing countries. Many depend on adjacent coastal seas for food, and livelihoods. We show how trends in demography and in several local and global anthropogenic stressors are progressively degrading capacity of coastal waters to sustain these people. Far more effective approaches to...
This discussion paper looks into the links between human wellbeing and the biosphere, and describes why and how these links should influence the formulation of the future global Sustainable Development Goals. It explores what we can learn from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and how existing international agreements can be reflected in the...
The linkage between ecosystems and human well-being is a focus of the conceptualization of "ecosystem services" as promoted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, the actual nature of connections between ecosystems and the well-being of individuals remains complex and poorly understood. We conducted a series of qualitative focus groups wi...
Enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services (ES) that underpin human well-being is critical for meeting current and future societal needs, and requires specific governance and management policies. Using the literature, we identify seven generic policy-relevant principles for enhancing the resilience of desired ES in the face of disturbance and o...
