Funded by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, US Department of Commerce.
April 2007 - October 2008.
PI: Seth Tuler (Social and Environmental Research Institute)
Co-PI: Tom Webler (Social and Environmental Research Institute)
Consultant: Colin Polsky (Clark University)
The primary goal of our project is to demonstrate the practicality and utility of an innovative rapid vulnerability assessment framework for gathering routine social, economic, and cultural information about vulnerabilities of sub-groups to inform fisheries management decision-making. The information derived from assessments based on this framework can improve understandings of potential vulnerabilities and disproportionate impacts arising from proposed regulatory changes.
This project builds on an earlier project funded by the National Marine Fisheries Service to characterize and identify vulnerable populations among northeast fishery stakeholders (Award to Clark University by the Department of Commerce #EA133F-04-SE-0802, October 2004 - September, 2005). This project established the importance of considering vulnerability of fishing communities to describe the impacts of environmental, social, economic, and demographic changes. This project raised the question of how information about vulnerability can be gathered as part of routine data gathering requirements of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
As part of the current project we will demonstrate how a "causal chain model of risk" supplemented with an innovative technique for rapid vulnerability assessment can be used to gather routine information about vulnerabilities and risks of disproportionate impacts within fishery sectors and/or fishery-related communities.
To demonstrate its practicality and utility we have organized our work around two objectives: 1) apply the framework in multiple fishery communities in New England and 2) assess the practicality and utility of the framework. We are applying the framework in three areas:
1. Chatham, Massachusetts
2. Coastal New Hampshire
3. New Bedford, Massachusetts
The risk-based framework to rapid vulnerability assessment that we propose to demonstrate can be a useful component of management efforts to promote sustainable marine fisheries. It can be applied broadly, and to different scales of interest. There are several anticipated benefits.
First, the approach has a capacity to explicate vulnerabilities and disproportionate impacts to sub-groups within commercial fishery sectors and fishery-related communities. It can also link these vulnerabilities and impacts to specific driving forces. An advantage of vulnerability assessments comes from the multi-dimensional characterization of vulnerability that encompasses exposure, susceptibility, and adaptive capacity. Unlike impact assessments, vulnerability assessments help to focus attention on capacity factors, that is, factors that promote mitigation, coping, flexibility, adaptation, and resilience as well as exposure to threats that can result in undesirable impacts.
Second, the proposed framework produces "useable knowledge." It is used to derive information from a diverse sample of fishermen, fisheries managers, and fishery scientists. Its open-ended, qualitative approach ensures that subjective yet important matters of social and cultural concerns/conflicts and psychological perceptions are incorporated into the final analysis. Their knowledge and experiences are represented – or mapped – in a way that enables identification of important gaps in knowledge, areas of agreement, and critical variables and interactions. Thus, it can inform data gathering efforts by focusing attention on key variables and their interactions. Furthermore, it provides a means of highlighting the rationale for believing that disproportionate impacts and vulnerabilities may be related (or not) to specific management actions.
Third, the framework can lead to assessments being conducted in days or weeks – not months or years, as required for a "full blown" assessment that seeks to be comprehensive. Comprehensive assessments are impractical from a resource management perspective. Thus, the framework provides an opportunity for strategic, cost-effective approach for improving input to decision-makers. It also avoids problems that arise from more opportunistic approaches because of the underlying conceptual models of risk and vulnerability that guide data gathering and explicitly link to management options.
Fourth, while the ability to implement the framework rapidly allows managers to obtain an inexpensive and quick first-cut at understanding threats and change (e.g., new regulations, economic threats, changes to community structure, changes to fish stocks) its simplicity also lends itself to being reproduced over time and within multiple communities and sectors by gathering data about a consistent set of indicators (with room to supplement specific studies with additional, locally or sector-relevant information). This will allow managers to develop an understanding of trends, even if they acknowledge that it does not provide "the complete picture." Furthermore, the rapid vulnerability assessment component of the framework can be used as a "first cut" whose results can focus further more detailed assessments or to supplement other routine information gathering activities (e.g., Community Profiles).
Publications and Presentations
Tuler, S., Agyeman, J., Pinto da Silva, P., LoRusso, K., and Kay, R. 2008. Assessing Vulnerabilities: Integrating Information about Driving Forces that Affect Risks and Resilience in Fishing Communities, Human Ecology Review 15(2):171-184.