Resilience and Social Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts in Small-Scale Fisheries

[Abstract] Small-cale fisheries are important for livelihoods, food security, jobs and income worldwide. However, they face major challenges, including the increasing effects of climate change that pose serious risks to coastal ecosystems and fishing communities. Although scientific research on climate change impacts has increased in recent years, few studies have explored the social impacts on small-scale fisheries. Using Galicia (Spain) as a case study, we investigated individual and household-level adaptive responses to climate change among fishers in three fishing guilds (Cambados, Campelo, and Redondela). Specifically, we estimated the economic vulnerability of shellfishers and assessed the diversity of social adaptive responses used to deal with climate change. Although fishers’ income strongly depends on shellfishing in all studied areas, our findings show that less fishing experience and lower engagement in fisher associations tend to increase the economic vulnerability of the fishers. The fishers’ vulnerability decreases as the size of households increases, while fishers who pay a mortgage and who live in households with fewer active members tend to be more vulnerable. The findings also show that Galician shellfishers have developed a wide range of adaptation strategies to anticipate and respond to climate change impacts, namely harvesting pricier and more abundant species, reducing household expenses and increasing social involvement in shellfishery associations. Although the adaptive strategies have helped Galician fishers to deal with climate change impacts, several threats to the sustainability of shellfisheries remain, such as a decrease in the abundance of key native shellfish species, and a high dependence on public and private aid to ensure reasonable incomes for shellfisheries. These findings are of interest and relevance to other similar small-scale fisheries around the world facing similar climate change challenges.This research was supported by grants CTM2014- 51935-R from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad to the project MARISCO and the Autonomous government Xunta de Galicia-FEDER (projects GRC2013-004, ED431C 2017/46). SV and PP acknowledge funding from the Xunta de Galicia (RECREGES II project under Grant 1400 ED481B2018/017, and Grupo de Referencia Competitiva GI-2060 AEMI, under Grant 1401 ED431C2019/11), the H2020–European Commission project Atlantic ECOsystems assessment, forecasting & sustainability (AtlantECO, ref. 2019-PI022). SV thanks the financial support for the EQUALSEA project ERC Consolidator, under Grant Agreement n°101002784 funded by the European Research Council. GM was supported by post-doctoral contracts from projects MARISCO and PERCEBES (BiodivERsA COFUND & Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación; PCIN-2016-063)Xunta de Galicia; GRC2013-004Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2017/46Xunta de Galicia; ED481B2018/017Xunta de Galicia; ED431C2019/1