The demand for gender analysis is now increasingly orthodox in natural resource programming, including that for small-scale fisheries. Whilst the analysis of social-ecological resilience has made valuable contributions to integrating social dimensions into research and policy-making on natural resource management, it has so far demonstrated limited success in effectively integrating considerations of gender equity. This paper reviews the challenges in, and opportunities for, bringing a gender analysis together with social-ecological resilience analysis in the context of small-scale fisheries research in developing countries. We conclude that rather than searching for a single unifying framework for gender and resilience analysis, it will be more effective to pursue a plural solution in which closer engagement is fostered between analysis of gender and social-ecological resilience whilst preserving the strengths of each approach. This approach can make an important contribution to developing a better evidence base for small-scale fisheries management and policy.
A greater understanding of gendered roles in fisheries is necessary to value the often-hidden roles that women play in fisheries and households. We examine women's contributions to household food and income using focus group discussions, market surveys, and landings data in six communities in Timor-Leste. Women were actively fishing more days per month than men. Gleaning was the most frequent activity and 100% of trips returned with catch for food and/or income. Mollusc and crab catches were common and exploitation appeared targeted on a dynamic reappraisal of changing food values and changing estimates of group needs. With as many as 80% of households in coastal areas involved in fishing, and at least 50% of women fishing, this highlights the current lack of women's engagement as a critical gap in fisheries management approaches. The current androcentric dialogue limits social-ecological understanding of these systems and the potential for their effective stewardship.
We present herein our perspective of a novel Small Habitats Matrix (SHM) concept showing how small habitats on private lands are untapped but can be valuable for mitigating ecological degradation. Grounded by the realities in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, we model a discontinuous "stepping stones" linkage that includes both terrestrial and aquatic habitats to illustrate exactly how the SHM can be deployed. Taken together, the SHM is expected to optimize the meta-population vitality in monoculture landscapes for aerial, arboreal, terrestrial and aquatic wildlife communities. We also provide the tangible cost estimates and discuss how such a concept is both economically affordable and plausible to complement global conservation initiatives. By proposing a practical approach to conservation in the rapidly developing tropics, we present a perspective from "ground zero" that reaches out to fellow scientists, funders, activists and pro-environmental land owners who often ask, "What more can we do?"
The international development community is off-track from meeting targets for alleviating global malnutrition. Meanwhile, there is growing consensus across scientific disciplines that fish plays a crucial role in food and nutrition security. However, this 'fish as food' perspective has yet to translate into policy and development funding priorities. We argue that the traditional framing of fish as a natural resource emphasizes economic development and biodiversity conservation objectives, whereas situating fish within a food systems perspective can lead to innovative policies and investments that promote nutrition-sensitive and socially equitable capture fisheries and aquaculture. This paper highlights four pillars of research needs and policy directions toward this end. Ultimately, recognizing and working to enhance the role of fish in alleviating hunger and malnutrition can provide an additional long-term development incentive, beyond revenue generation and biodiversity conservation, for governments, international development organizations, and society more broadly to invest in the sustainability of capture fisheries and aquaculture.
Small-scale inland capture fisheries provide an important source of nutritious food, employment and income to millions of people in developing countries, particularly in rural environments where limited alternatives exist. However, the sector is one of most under-valued fisheries sectors and is increasingly experiencing environmental change. This study adopts a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach and investigates how important a fluctuating inland fishery is to livelihoods, and how local perceptions on challenges corresponds to global evidence. Through an innovative participatory method; photovoice, the lived experiences and perceptions of fishers are depicted. The findings illuminate the valuable role of the sector to food and nutrition security and the complex nexus with vulnerability to climate change. The study responds to the call for more local level assessments of the impacts of climate change on inland fisheries in data-limited environments, and the value of the sector in underpinning the Sustainable Development Goals.
China prioritizes ecological civilization construction and embraces the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets." Great achievements have been made in ecological protection and restoration through implementing a series of policies and projects. This paper reviews the history of ecological restoration in China and the current development of the "integrated protection and restoration project of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and deserts (IPRP)." Furthermore, the characteristics of IPRP were systematically elaborated from the perspectives of the ecological civilization thought, the policy management, and the key scientific issues. Also, the current achievements were summarized in the fields of national ecological space management, biodiversity conservation, and ecological protection and restoration. Existing challenges in management policy, scientific issues, and engineering practices were highlighted. Future perspectives include ecological space control, nature-based Solutions, biodiversity big data platform, modern techniques, and value realization mechanisms of ecological products.
In many regions of the world, biodiversity surveys are not routinely conducted prior to activities that lead to land conversion, such as development projects. Here we use top-down methods based on global range maps and bottom-up methods based on macroecological scaling laws to illuminate the otherwise hidden biodiversity impacts of three large hydroelectric dams in the state of Sarawak in northern Borneo. Our retrospective impact assessment finds that the three reservoirs inundate habitat for 331 species of birds (3 million individuals) and 164 species of mammals (110 million individuals). A minimum of 2100 species of trees (900 million individuals) and 17 700 species of arthropods (34 billion individuals) are estimated to be affected by the dams. No extinctions of bird, mammal, or tree species are expected due to habitat loss following reservoir inundation, while 4-7 arthropod species extinctions are predicted. These assessment methods are applicable to any data-limited system undergoing land-use change.
The tin mining activities in the suburbs of Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, have resulted in technical enhancement of the natural background radiation as well as higher activity concentrations of primordial radionuclides in the topsoil of mining sites and their environs. Several studies have considered the radiological human health risks of the mining activity; however, to our knowledge no documented study has investigated the radiological impacts on biota. Hence, an attempt is made to assess potential hazards using published data from the literature and the ERICA Tool. This paper considers the effects of mining and milling on terrestrial organisms like shrubs, large mammals, small burrowing mammals, birds (duck), arthropods (earth worm), grasses, and herbs. The dose rates and risk quotients to these organisms are computed using conservative values for activity concentrations of natural radionuclides reported in Bitsichi and Bukuru mining areas. The results suggest that grasses, herbs, lichens, bryophytes and shrubs receive total dose rates that are of potential concern. The effects of dose rates to specific indicator species of interest are highlighted and discussed. We conclude that further investigation and proper regulations should be set in place in order to reduce the risk posed by the tin mining activity on biota. This paper also presents a brief overview of the impact of mineral mining on biota based on documented literature for other countries.
Small-scale fisheries present challenges to management due to fishers' dependency on resources and the adaptability of management systems. We compared social-ecological processes in the sea cucumber fisheries of Zanzibar and Mayotte, Western Indian Ocean, to better understand the reasons for resource conservation or collapse. Commercial value of wild stocks was at least 30 times higher in Mayotte than in Zanzibar owing to lower fishing pressure. Zanzibar fishers were financially reliant on the fishery and increased fishing effort as stocks declined. This behavioral response occurred without adaptive management and reinforced an unsustainable fishery. In contrast, resource managers in Mayotte adapted to changing fishing effort and stock abundance by implementing a precautionary fishery closure before crossing critical thresholds. Fishery closure may be a necessary measure in small-scale fisheries to preserve vulnerable resources until reliable management systems are devised. Our comparison highlighted four poignant lessons for managing small-scale fisheries: (1) diagnose the fishery regularly, (2) enable an adaptive management system, (3) constrain exploitation within ecological limits, and (4) share management responsibility.
The past decade has seen increased international recognition of the importance of the services provided by natural ecosystems. It is unclear however whether such international awareness will lead to improved environmental management in many regions. We explore this issue by examining the specific case of fish migration and dams on the Mekong river. We determine that dams on the Mekong mainstem and major tributaries will have a major impact on the basin's fisheries and the people who depend upon them for food and income. We find no evidence that current moves towards dam construction will stop, and consider two scenarios for the future of the fisheries and other ecosystems of the basin. We conclude that major investment is required in innovative technology to reduce the loss of ecosystem services, and alternative livelihood strategies to cope with the losses that do occur.
The Sulu-Sulawesi Sea, with neighboring Indonesian Seas and South China Sea, lies at the center of the world's tropical marine biodiversity. Encircled by 3 populous, developing nations, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, the Sea and its adjacent coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, supports ca. 33 million people, most with subsistence livelihoods heavily reliant on its renewable natural resources. These resources are being impacted severely by rapid population growth (> 2% yr-1, with expected doubling by 2035) and widespread poverty, coupled with increasing international market demand and rapid technological changes, compounded by inefficiencies in governance and a lack of awareness and/or acceptance of some laws among local populations, particularly in parts of the Philippines and Indonesia. These key root causes all contribute to illegal practices and corruption, and are resulting in severe resource depletion and degradation of water catchments, river, lacustrine, estuarine, coastal, and marine ecosystems. The Sulu-Sulawesi Sea forms a major geopolitical focus, with porous borders, transmigration, separatist movements, piracy, and illegal fishing all contributing to environmental degradation, human suffering and political instability, and inhibiting strong trilateral support for interventions. This review analyzes these multifarious environmental and socioeconomic impacts and their root causes, provides a future prognosis of status by 2020, and recommends policy options aimed at amelioration through sustainable management and development.
This article is based on the findings of the Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA) Subregion 53, Bay of Bengal. It introduces the Subregion. The wide disparity in development indicators in the Bay of Bengal Subregion (BOBSR) is presented. The large population of poor people living in South Asia is presented as a factor that needs special attention. The article focuses on the 3 geographic sites selected for detailed analysis: i) the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river systems; ii) the Merbok Estuary mangroves, Malaysia; and iii) the Sunderbans mangroves, Bangladesh. Integrated water management based upon regional cooperation among Bangladesh, India and Nepal holds opportunities for mutual benefit. Policy options are proposed. For mangrove ecosystems, the impacts of urbanization in Malaysia and the unmanaged expansion of shrimp farming in Bangladesh are analyzed. Improved governance was seen to hold promise for enhancing economic benefits from shrimp farming while safeguarding the natural ecological system. However, these measures need to be a part of national efforts to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.
Pyrodinium bahamense (var. compressum) has been the only dinoflagellate species that has caused major public health and economic problems in the Southeast Asian region for more than 2 decades now. It produces saxitoxin, a suite of toxins that cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP). A serious toxicological problem affecting many countries of the world, mild cases of this poisoning can occur within 30 minutes while in extreme cases, death through respiratory paralysis may occur within 2-24 hrs of ingestion of intoxicated shellfish. Blooms of the organism have been reported in Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines and Indonesia. The ASEAN-Canada Red Tide Network has recorded 31 blooms of the organism in 26 areas since 1976 when it first occurred in Sabah, Malaysia. As of 1999, the most hard hit country has been the Philippines which has the greatest number of areas affected (18) and highest number of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) cases (about 1995). Malaysia has reported a total of 609 PSP cases and 44 deaths while Brunei has recorded 14 PSP cases and no fatalities. Indonesia, on the other hand has a record of 427 PSP cases and 17 deaths. Studies on ecological/environmental impacts of these blooms have not been done in the region. Estimates of economic impacts have shown that the loss could be up to USD 300,000 day-1. Most of the data and information useful for understanding Pyrodinium bloom dynamics have come from harmful/toxic algal monitoring and research that have developed to different degrees in the various countries in the region affected by the organism's bloom. Regional collaborative research and monitoring efforts can help harmonize local data sets and ensure their quality and availability for comparative analysis and modeling. Temporal patterns of the blooms at local and regional scales and possible signals and trends in the occurrence/recurrence and spread of Pyrodinium blooms could be investigated. Existing descriptive and simple predictive models of Pyrodinium blooms can be improved and refined to help in the management of the wild harvest and aquaculture of shellfish in a region where the people are dependent on these resources for their daily food sustainance and livelihood.
Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are so fundamentally different in some aspects that many of the issues concerning biodiversity cannot be interpreted using a single theory of common application to all ecosystems. Their limitation is evident when it comes to highly biodiverse and interconnected marine ecosystems such as coral reefs. Trophic links are a major factor, but space, breeding, shelter from predators, environmental cues, behavior ingrained in genotypes, genetic variability, mutations, and connectivity of marine critical habitats are also important. The importance of the connectivity of habitats such as coral reefs, seagrasses, and mangrove in biodiversity preservation should be recognized. Migratory species require corridors for gene flow and that influences diversity. The existing theories do not address the biodiversity issues related to life in the abyssal plains and deep sea trenches and the challenge posed by climate change. An accurate understanding of marine biodiversity requires comprehensive knowledge of ecological interrelationships and new perspectives that reflect the reality of global environmental change.