Peripherality as key to understanding opportunities and needs for effective and sustainable climate - change adaptation: a case study from Viti Levu Island, Fiji

A study of various defining aspects of 11 rural communities along the cross-island road on Viti Levu (Fiji) shows diversity attributable largely to their peripherality, proxied by distance along this 200-km long road. Strong relationships are found between peripherality and both community size and the dependency ratio (percent of young/old dependents), as well as traditional medicine usage (and percent traditional healers), and autonomous community coping after disasters. Two measures are calculated to capture community autonomy, both of which proxy peripherality. Results show the usefulness of peripherality as a way of measuring community diversity in developing-country contexts. Peripherality also correlates with community autonomy, more-peripheral communities having greater autonomous coping abilities/capacity than near-core (less-peripheral) communities. Results also show the unhelpfulness of the default ‘“one-size-fits-all’” approach to communities implicit in many external assistance programs. Yet while traditional coping in such communities may not be able to fully overcome future climate-change challenges, the conservation of the traditional knowledge underpinning this should be encouraged, mainly because of the likelihood that external funding for future adaptation in such communities will be inadequate. The best hope for effective and sustainable adaptation to future climate change, focused on sustaining livelihoods, lies in strengthening autonomous community coping

Locally managed marine areas: implications for socio - economic impacts in Kadavu, Fiji

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a widely used marine conservation tool designed to preserve marine biodiversity and improve fisheries management. Although the environmental benefits of MPAs are well established, evaluating the social and economic impacts of MPAs is challenging. In this paper we quantitatively identify the economic and social differences between communities based on whether or not the community has a tabu area in their local fishing ground. This is an area permanently closed to fishing within a locally managed marine area (LMMA), a form of MPA in the Pacific region. To do this we analyse survey data at both the household and village level in Kadavu, an administrative province of Fiji. We find there are differences in economic activity and diet between the communities but little difference in overall income and wealth. Our study shows that villages with an active tabu area have more positive social outcomes in terms of perceptions of LMMAs. However, there are some notable negative social outcomes as well. In particular, we find that households not engaged in commercial fishing perceive conflict around the management of marine resources. We also find that households engaged in commercial fishing believe penalties for violating LMMA rules are high. Together, these results could potentially impede the adoption of LMMAs and tabu areas. Overall, our survey results do not indicate that tabu areas are detrimental or beneficial on the whole, either economically and socially

Coastal protection: best practices from the Pacific

Pacific coasts are constantly changing as a result of natural processes such as tides, strong currents, rain, storm surges, strong wind, cyclones and sea level rise. With increasing human activities within the coastal areas in terms of human settlement, land use changes, flow of solid and liquid waste and coastal developments such as beach ramps, jetties, causeways, coastal protection structures, reef mining and extractions of sand and beach aggregates, there is ever increasing change along Pacific coasts. In addition, climate change and climate variability and extreme weather events have exacerbated the rate of change of Pacific coasts. The coast has been defined as the zone where the land and sea meet. The main features of Pacific coasts are dominated by coral reefs, reef ridges, inter-tidal ridges, beaches, cliffs, wave actions and mangroves. Pacific coasts are designated important areas for providing vital Pacific livelihood. The coastal ecosystems, human sett lement and other major supporting services and basic infrastructure are centred on the coastal zone. Coasts are being used for many reasons. The underlying problem is that Pacific coasts are in a state of crisis. A number of human engineering interventions over the past decade have contributed and accelerated the coastal erosion problem in the Pacific Region. The Pacific coastline is over 50,532 km long. Both natural processes and human engineering work are blamed for causing coastal erosion. This guide has been produced to inform and assist coastal experts, managers, and Pacific communities understand the various measures they can take to reduce coastal erosion

Co - designing marine science beyond good intentions: support stakeholders’ empowerment in transformative pathways

Calls for science to innovate by including stakeholders' in the creation of marine knowledge have been rising, to create impact beyond laboratories and to contribute to the empowerment of local communities when interacting with marine and coastal ecosystems. As a transdisciplinary group of scientists working on co-designing research projects, this paper draws upon our experiences to further define the concept and seek to improve the process of co-design. We highlight the key barriers for co-design processes to contribute to increasing stakeholders' capacity to produce intended effects on marine policy. We suggest that stakeholder engagement requires overcoming the resistance to non-scientific knowledge sources and considering power asymmetries in the governance and management of the ocean. We argue that power and politics must be placed at the very heart of the production of a co-designed marine science and must be an aspect of the facilitation itself. In this paper, we aim to provide insights to navigate throughout the journey of stakeholder engagement, with the critical perspective necessary to make this process socially and environmentally effective

The community - based socioeconomic monitoring training guide (application Muaivuso village, Yavuso, Navakavu)

Participants from several FLMMA project sites, which included Votua village from the province of Ba, district of Wai and Korolevu-i-Wai in the province of Nadroga, and Navakavu from the province of Rewa, attended a two-day socioeconomic monitoring training at Muaivusu village on May 15-16, 2003. The workshop had two major activities. The first activity was the involvement and participation of the community representatives in identifying socioeconomic factors that they perceive can gauge the changes in the livelihood and welfare of their respective communities. The second involved the use of a questionnaire to collect socioeconomic data that may depict the changes in the livelihood and welfare status of the community as the result of the impact of the project. The first day of the training focused on understanding what socioeconomic monitoring is, why this is done and monitoring or survey methods that are applied. On the second day the participants developed and trial questionnaire to assess how much the four villages of Yavusa Navakavu (with Muaivusu as the chiefly village) are dependent on marine resources for their livelihood. Actual household surveys were carried out in the late afternoon to the evening of the first day. Participants,were briefed on collation and analysis of data collected on Day One for each of the four villages. Percentages were worked out on incomes derived from land versus sea resources and other income sources as well. In addition participants developed socioeconomic monitoring plan for their village primarily based on the participants' observation and experience in relation to the impact of the implementation of the marine resource management plan on their socioeconomic well-being. They identified socioeconomic indicators that they perceive will best capture these changes

Community participation, situated knowledge and climate change (Mal-) adaptation in rural island communities: Evidence from artificial shoreline protection structures in Fiji

Small Island Developing States like Fiji are climate change hotspots. Adaptation to climate change is thus paramount. Research has underlined the importance of indigenous or local knowledge and community participation for island communities to successfully adapt to the effects of a changing climate, such as sea-level rise and shoreline change. Yet, indigenous knowledge and community participation are not enough. We here point to the need to combine indigenous and scientific knowledges. We use the example of seawalls in rural Fiji communities to illustrate our argument. Although seawalls are very popular throughout the Fiji archipelago (and beyond), they are largely ineffective and unsustainable solutions to a long-term problem. Particularly in rural locations, seawalls fail to reduce shoreline erosion and groundwater salinization, or to protect infrastructure and settlements from flooding. Although the decision-making process is participatory and bottom-up, and although local knowledge inputs to decision-making may be considerable, integration of local and scientific knowledge to create adaptive, situated knowledge and to build climate resilient communities is generally lacking. Successful climate change adaptation requires informed investigation of the local context, the drivers of change, and local inhabitants’ awareness of the consequences of different response measures. To create such situated knowledge through community participation, scientific information on climate change as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various coping strategies must be effectively communicated to community decision-makers and integrated with existing local cultural knowledge. Real empowerment requires appropriately skilled persons with both a scientific understanding of climate change combined with a sense of locality and a vested interest in the long-term security of its inhabitants