News

This link opens a new window to the full article at NathanBennett.ca.

Concerns about the negative consequences of conservation for local people have prompted attention toward how to address the social impacts of different conservation projects, programs, and policies. Inevitably, when actions are taken to protect or manage the environment this will produce a suite of both positive and negative social impacts for local communities and resource users. Thus, a challenge for conservation and environmental decision-makers and managers is maximizing social benefits while minimizing negative burdens across social, economic, cultural, health, and governance spheres of human well-being. The last decade has seen significant advances in both the methods and the metrics for understanding how conservation and environmental management impact human well-being. There has also been increased uptake in socio-economic monitoring programs in conservation organizations and environmental agencies. Yet, little guidance exists on how to integrate the results of social impact monitoring back into conservation management and decision-making. We recommend that conservation organizations and environmental agencies take steps to better understand and address the social impacts of conservation and environmental management. This can be achieved by integrating key components of the adaptive social impact management (ASIM) cycle outlined below, and in a new paper published today in Conservation Biology, into decision-making and management processes**.

This research aims to determine the socio-economic contribution of small-scale fisheries in British Columbia. In order to do so, a definition of small-scale fisheries is needed, as there is currently no national working definition of this sector in Canada. First, we apply three approaches presented in the literature to split British Columbia’s fishing fleets into small- and large-scale sectors. Second, we overlap the results from the three approaches to categorize BC’s fisheries into small- and large-scale. Third, we evaluate the socio-economic contribution of small- and large-scale fisheries identified by the three approaches. We show that many of British Columbia’s fisheries can be classified as small-scale. From these analyses, we also demonstrate that the small-scale sector receives a higher average price per pound of landed catch than the large-scale sector. However, the large-scale sector consumes less fuel per tonne of landed catch than small-scale fisheries, which does not fit with the trend in the fuel consumption of global large-scale fisheries reported in the literature. Individuals own most of the vessels in the small-scale sector, many of which are located outside Greater Vancouver. In contrast, companies own nearly all of the large-scale vessels and the majority of these companies are located in Greater Vancouver.

We empirically examine relationships among the conditions that enable learning, learning effects and sustainability outcomes based on experiences in four biosphere reserves in Canada and Sweden. In doing so, we provide a novel approach to measure learning and address an important methodological and empirical challenge in assessments of learning processes in decision-making contexts. Findings from this study highlight the effectiveness of different measures of learning, and how to differentiate the factors that foster learning with the outcomes of learning. Our approach provides a useful reference point for future empirical studies of learning in different environment, resource and sustainability settings.

Small-scale fisheries have been estimated to contribute up to 30% of the global landed value, which is caught by approximately 22 million fishers, some of which can be attributed to developed countries. Socio-economic analysis of small-scale fisheries often focuses on developing countries and fails to recognize the presence and contribution of small-scale fisheries in the developed world. Fisheries in British Columbia are diverse and often regarded as being industrialized and large-scale when analyzed in a global context. This study aims to demonstrate that features of small-scale fisheries are present within British Columbia’s fleets. A list of re-occurring features of small-scale fisheries is curated from the literature to capture physical, economic and social features of small-scale fisheries. These commonly identified features of small-scale fisheries are applied to Aboriginal Food, Social and Ceremonial fisheries and all commercial fisheries in British Columbia are analyzed to determine the presence or absence of each small-scale fishery feature. The results of this research create a gradient of fisheries from smallest to largest scale. This approach determines that Aboriginal Food, Social and Ceremonial fisheries are the most small-scale, while the sablefish fishery is the largest scale. The qualitative nature of this framework creates an opportunity for any group of fisheries in the world to be compared.

“Successful management and conservation of marine ecosystems depends as much on understanding humans as it does on understanding marine organisms and their environment …The social sciences – economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, law, and more – are the formal examination of human society. They study how societies function, how individuals in a society relate to one another, and the institutions societies form. Insights and data from these disciplines in ocean planning are essential to understanding how people use the marine environment, and how they create and may react to new and different forms of ocean governance.”

Professor Rashid Sumaila is one of the world’s most innovative researchers on the future of the oceans, integrating the social and economic dimensions with ecology, law, fisheries science and traditional knowledge to build novel pathways towards sustainable fisheries. His work has challenged today’s approaches to marine governance and generated exciting new ways of thinking about our relationship to the marine biosphere, such as protecting the high seas as a ‘fish bank’ for the world and using ‘intergeneration discount rates’ for natural resource projects.

Corruption, Natural Resources and Development provides a fresh and extensive discussion of corruption issues in natural resources sectors. Reflecting on recent debates in corruption research and revisiting resource curse challenges in light of political ecology approaches, this volume provides a series of nuanced and policy-relevant case studies analysing patterns of corruption around natural resources and options to reach anti-corruption goals. Using corruption case studies across a wide spectrum of natural resource sectors from around the world, the expert contributions explore political ecology as a means of analysing resource curse challenges. The potential for new variations of the resource curse in the forest and urban land sectors and the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies in resource sectors are considered in depth. Corruption in oil, gas, mining, fisheries, biofuel, wildlife, forestry and urban land are all covered, and potential solutions discussed. (Chapter in Corruption, Natural Resources and Development.)

Climate change poses significant and increasing risks for Pacific Island communities. Sea-level rise, coastal flooding, extreme and variable storm events, fish stock redistribution, coral bleaching, and declines in ecosystem health and productivity threaten the wellbeing, health, safety, and national sovereignty of Pacific Islanders, and small-scale fishers in particular. Fostering the response capacity of small-scale fishing communities will become increasingly important for the Pacific Islands. Challenging decisions and trade-offs emerge when choosing and mobilizing different responses to climate change. The trade-offs inherent in different responses can occur between various exposures, across spatial and temporal scales, among segments of society, various objectives, and evaluative criteria. Here we introduce a typology of potential trade-offs inherent in responses, elaborated through examples from the Pacific. We argue that failure to adequately engage with trade-offs across human responses to climate change can potentially result in unintended consequences or lead to adverse outcomes for human vulnerability to climate change. Conversely, proactively identifying and addressing these trade-offs in decision-making processes will be critical for planning hazard mitigation and preparing island nations, communities, and individuals to anticipate and adapt to change, not only for Pacific Islands, but for coastal communities around the world.

Climate and weather have profound effects on economies, the food security and livelihoods of communities throughout the Pacific Island region. These effects are particularly important for small-scale fisheries and occur, for example, through changes in sea surface temperature, primary productivity, ocean currents, rainfall patterns, and through cyclones. This variability has impacts over both short and long time scales. We differentiate climate predictions (the actual state of climate at a particular point in time) from climate projections (the average state of climate over long time scales). The ability to predict environmental conditions over the time scale of months to decades will assist governments and coastal communities to reduce the impacts of climatic variability and take advantage of opportunities. We explore the potential to make reliable climate predictions over time scales of six months to 10 years for use by policy makers, managers and communities. We also describe how climate predictions can be used to make decisions on short time scales that should be of direct benefit to sustainable management of small-scale fisheries, and to disaster risk reduction, in Small-Island Developing States in the Pacific.

The United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established a target of 10% of the ocean to be protected by 2020 (‘Aichi Target 11’). The UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14) reinforces this commitment. Many scientists argue the 10% target is a first milestone for global ocean protection, not an endpoint. Scientific studies suggest that at least 30% of the ocean should be protected to achieve the desired benefits (1). Echoing the need for greater protection, the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2016 adopted the goal of 30% by 2030. However, despite remarkable progress in the last decade, we need to do much more to reach even the 10% goal by 2020. To make matters more challenging, many areas claimed by some countries as “protected” are, in fact, not protected. Only those protected areas that prohibit extractive or destructive activities are in fact protected. Therefore, ‘fully protected’ or ‘strongly protected’ marine reserves should be the protected areas of choice to achieve CBD’s and the SDG’s targets of global ocean protection. We hereby commit to working with the broader community to clarify and harmonize the language and approaches to achieve meaningful protection of coastal and ocean biodiversity, consistent with the Aichi and SDG goals.