Behaviour, Economics and Nature 2019-09-11

ReACTion

Small-scale coastal fisheries are central to local societies in terms of poverty alleviation and food security, affecting millions of people around the world. However, many of these fisheries are severely threatened by chronic overfishing and climate change impacts, while demand for local marine resources continues to increase as coastal populations grow.

Fishing village, Colombia.

These combined pressures call for better management, but solutions can be difficult to find, since they depend on the socio-economic, ecological and historical context. In this project we will systematically explore the role of these contextual factors for individual and collective resource extraction when fishers face increasing resource scarcity and variability. To this end we conduct field research in fishing villages in Thailand and Colombia, using a combination of field experiments, interviews and observational data. At the end of the project that plan is to synthesize the insights gained with the intent to aid local fishery communities and governments to identify and nurture strategies that allow fishers in these communities to make a good livelihood without jeopardizing future resource stocks.

Project members: Therese Lindahl (PI) and Caroline Schill from the Beijer Institute, and Rawadee Jarungrattanapong Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand, and Lina Maria Saavedra-Diaz, University of Magdalena in Colombia.

Funding: Swedish Research Council (#2017-05641)