Browsing by Subject "Social Vulnerability"

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    Open Access
    Climate change and small-scale fishing in South Africa: a community scale social vulnerability assessment for the southern Cape handline fishery
    (2022) Andra, Kayla; Jarre, Astrid; Karenyi, Natasha
    Climate change is majorly affecting the quality and quantity of marine organisms, as well as people's livelihoods. Coastal communities, small-scale fishers, and fishing-reliant individuals are especially vulnerable to climate change impacts (and other stressors) that alter the state and availability of ocean resources. Therefore, implementing integrated management approaches (such as the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF)) is crucial to address these vulnerabilities. This study concerns the vulnerability to the impacts of climate change of fishers who act as crew members in the southern Cape commercial handline fishery. The southern Cape is a rural, peri-urban, and urban region characterised by agriculture, fishing, tourism, and retirement services as major economic activities. Aside from their documented social, governance, and economic stressors, small-scale fishers in the southern Cape also face biophysical stress (i.e., changes in wind, rainfall, and sea state). The Global learning for understanding local solutions (GULLS) survey instrument and a social vulnerability framework were created to assess vulnerability and its comprising concepts (sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity) for coastal communities experiencing notable climate change. This study presents the first quantitative analysis of the data collected in the southern Cape in 2014-15. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to answer four key questions to investigate whether social vulnerability (as well as sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity) differed among the communities, how variable vulnerability is within the communities, what drives the differences among the communities and to gain insight on the implications for issues of scales. The fishing communities differed significantly in their overall social vulnerability scores. Sensitivity and exposure were similar between the fishing communities. Sensitivity was the main driver of vulnerability for all fishers due to their attachment to fishing as an occupation, low self-sufficiency, and attachment to their communities. There was no significant difference in the dispersion (homogeneity) of the fishers' responses within the communities. The results also corroborate previous qualitative research, showing that variations between the communities are driven by adaptive capacity. The “component” scale (the second scale of the four-scale GULLS framework) yielded the most beneficial results and is recommended for future analyses. In addition, recommendations are made for future surveys to address uneven weighting, fundamental system changes (such as COVID-19), and questions irrelevant to the southern Cape small-scale fishers. Overall, with these recommendations, an improved survey offers a quicker methodology that can easily be communicated with various decision-makers and paves the way for consistent temporal comparisons that stimulate a long-term understanding of vulnerability. Most importantly, these recommendations and methods can contribute to the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) implementation in the southern Cape and the sustainability of this marine social-ecological system.
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    Open Access
    Social vulnerability of fishing communities in the southern Cape to change, including additional pressures of COVID-19
    (2025) Netshithuthuni, Humbelani; Gammage, Louise; Ward, Catherine
    Marine systems are critical for providing support to the lives and livelihood of millions of people including small-scale fishers (SSFs). However, these communities are faced with many challenges such as resource scarcity, climate change and variability, policy and regulation and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic. This dissertation examines the social vulnerabilities of SSFs in the southern Cape, particularly in the two fishing towns of Bitouville and Melkhoutfontein, to better understand how challenges impact the ability of SSFs to support their livelihoods and how this has changed over the last 10 years. This research made use of a mixed-method technique that included both qualitative and quantitative aspects, drawing on the Global Understanding and Learning for Local Solutions (GULLS) survey that was first implemented in 2013/14 and amended to suit the local context of the southern Cape, which was administered through face-to-face interviews in 2023. Social vulnerability scores were calculated in line with the GULLS framework to gain a deeper insight into the vulnerabilities faced by SSFs and how these have evolved over the last decade. In both Bitouville and Melkhoutfontein communities, vulnerabilities of SSFs were exacerbated by the more recent COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the loss of income sources and available sea days, which in turn contributed to food insecurity. Regarding the evolution of the drivers of changes in 2013/14 and 2023, the results of this study revealed an increase in the social vulnerability scores in both Bitouville and Melkhoutfontein over time as a result of increased exposure to challenges linked to resource scarcity, climate change and variability, and policy and regulation. For example, the continued delay in the implementation of South Africa's small-scale fishing policy (SSFP) has contributed to increased vulnerability as this impacts SFFs' access to fishing rights. The results also revealed that SSFs in Bitouville faced more vulnerabilities compared to their counterparts in Melkhoutfontein, which was attributed to their higher social dependency on fishing, limited livelihood opportunities, higher exposure to environmental changes, and lower adaptive capacity. The vulnerability of these two fishing communities is thus increasing due to compounding stressors such as resource scarcity, climate variability, the COVID-19 pandemic and policy and regulation. This research highlighted the importance of improving the adaptive strategies of SSFs, as limited improvement in these strategies places the livelihoods of these fishing communities at greater risk and exacerbates vulnerabilities in the important, livelihood-intensive southern Cape fisheries.