Courtney Carothers

Engage key social concepts for sustainability

Social indicators, both mature and emerging, are underused With humans altering climate processes, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functions (1), governments and societies confront the challenge of shaping a sustainable future for people and nature. Policies and practices to address these challenges must draw on social sciences, along with natural sciences and engineering (2). Although various social science approaches can enable and assess progress toward sustainability, debate about such concrete engagement is outpacing actual use. To catalyze uptake, we identify seven key social concepts that are largely absent from many efforts to pursue sustainability goals. We present existing and emerging well-tested indicators and propose priority areas for conceptual and methodological development.

Total Environment of Change: Impacts of Climate Change and Social Transitions on Subsistence Fisheries in Northwest Alaska

Arctic ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes as a result of global climate change, with significant implications for the livelihoods of Arctic peoples. In this paper, based on ethnographic research conducted with the Inupiaq communities of Noatak and Selawik in northwestern Alaska, we detail prominent environmental changes observed over the past twenty to thirty years and their impacts on subsistence-based lifestyles. However, we suggest that it is ultimately insufficient to try to understand how Arctic communities are experiencing and responding to climate change in isolation from other stressors. During interviews and participant observation documenting local observations of climatic and related environmental shifts and impacts to subsistence fishing practices, we find the inseparability of environmental, social, economic, cultural, and political realms for community residents. Many of our informants, who live in a mixed economy based on various forms of income and widespread subsistence harvesting of fish and game, perceive and experience climate change as embedded among numerous other factors affecting subsistence patterns and practices. Changing lifestyles, decreasing interest by younger generations in pursuing subsistence livelihoods, and economic challenges are greatly affecting contemporary subsistence patterns and practices in rural Alaska. Observations of climate change are perceived, experienced, and articulated to researchers through a broader lens of these linked lifestyle and cultural shifts. Therefore, we argue that to properly assess and understand the impacts of climate change on the subsistence practices in Arctic communities, we must also consider the total environment of change that is dramatically shaping the relationship between people, communities, and their surrounding environments.

Parks, people, and change: the importance of multistakeholder engagement in adaptation planning for conserved areas

Climate change challenges the traditional goals and conservation strategies of protected areas, necessitating adaptation to changing conditions. Denali National Park and Preserve (Denali) in south central Alaska, USA, is a vast landscape that is responding to climate change in ways that will impact both ecological resources and local communities. Local observations help to inform understanding of climate change and adaptation planning, but whose knowledge is most important to consider? For this project we interviewed long-term Denali staff, scientists, subsistence community members, bus drivers, and business owners to assess what types of observations each can contribute, how climate change is impacting each, and what they think the National Park Service should do to adapt. The project shows that each type of long-term observer has different types of observations, but that those who depend more directly on natural resources for their livelihoods have more and different observations than those who do not. These findings suggest that engaging multiple groups of stakeholders who interact with the park in distinct ways adds substantially to the information provided by Denali staff and scientists and offers a broader foundation for adaptation planning. It also suggests that traditional protected area paradigms that fail to learn from and foster appropriate engagement of people may be maladaptive in the context of climate change.

The Graying of the Alaskan Fishing Fleet

In 2014, Alaska’s newly elected Governor Bill Walker assembled a Fisheries Transition Committee to assist his administration with addressing the major challenges affecting Alaska fisheries. In contrast to other regions in the United States and the globe, Alaska’s fishery resources largely remain healthy. Yet the sustainability of its fishery systems is in question. The committee recognized “prioritizing and improving fishery access for Alaskans” as one of its key goals. This was the most recent call to arms in a state that provides more than 55% of U.S. seafood production but whose fishing communities are struggling to survive, suffering from the cumulative loss of local fisheries access.1 Declining access to commercial fisheries is not a new problem in Alaska, but it is an increasingly pressing one.2–4 Coastal communities, fishery managers, and researchers have been grappling with the question of how to ensure the sustained participation of rural coastal residents in Alaska fisheries since the state began limiting entry into commercial fisheries more than 40 years ago.5 Between 1975 and 2014, Alaska’s rural fishing communities felt the Bristol Bay drift boats on the Naknek River.

Evaluating indicators of human well-being for ecosystem-based management

ABSTRACT Introduction: Interrelated social and ecological challenges demand an understanding of how environmental change and management decisions affect human well-being. This paper outlines a framework for measuring human well-being for ecosystem-based management (EBM). We present a prototype that can be adapted and developed for various scales and contexts. Scientists and managers use indicators to assess status and trends in integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs). To improve the social science rigor and success of EBM, we developed a systematic and transparent approach for evaluating indicators of human well-being for an IEA. Methods: Our process is based on a comprehensive conceptualization of human well-being, a scalable analysis of management priorities, and a set of indicator screening criteria tailored to the needs of EBM. We tested our approach by evaluating more than 2000 existing social indicators related to ocean and coastal management of the US West Coast. We focused on two foundational attributes of human well-being: resource access and self-determination. Outcomes and Discussion: Our results suggest that existing indicators and data are limited in their ability to reflect linkages between environmental change and human well-being, and extremely limited in their ability to assess social equity and justice. We reveal a critical need for new social indicators tailored to answer environmental questions and new data that are disaggregated by social variables to measure equity. In both, we stress the importance of collaborating with the people whose well-being is to be assessed. Conclusion: Our framework is designed to encourage governments and communities to carefully assess the complex tradeoffs inherent in environmental decision-making.

Seabirds as a subsistence and cultural resource in two remote Alaskan communities

Small rural Alaskan communities face many challenges surrounding rapid social and ecological change. The role of local subsistence resources may change over time because of changes in social perception, economic need, and cultural patterns of use. We look at the Bering Sea’s Pribilof Islands, comprising two very small communities, and investigate the relationship between the local residents and seabirds as a natural resource. Seabirds may strengthen ties to older ways of life and have potential for future economic opportunities, or modernization may direct interest away from seabirds as a cultural and economic resource. We conducted a survey and interviews of residents of the two Pribilof Island communities, St. Paul and St. George, to assess opinions toward seabirds and harvest levels. Seabirds were generally regarded as important both to individuals and the wider community. However, current levels of subsistence harvest are low, and few people continue to actively harvest or visit seabird colonies. Respondents expressed desire for greater knowledge about seabirds and also concerns about the current economy of the islands and a lack of future development prospects. Despite the challenging economic conditions, the villages retain a strong sense of community and place value on their environment and on seabirds. Surveys indicated an interest in developing eco-tourism based around local resources, including seabirds, as a way to improve the economy.

Introduction: conceptual, methodological, practical, and ethical challenges in studying and applying indigenous knowledge

For over a half a century, indigenous knowledge systems have captured the attention of anthropologists (Hunn 2007). Recently, interest has intensified both inside and outside the discipline among scholars and practitioners in a wide variety of contexts ranging from international development, resource management, sustainability and resilience, disaster response, climate change, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, and ethnoveterinary studies (ReyesGarcia et al. 2009, UNESCO 2009, Maffi and Woodley 2010). Simultaneously, sophisticated conceptual and methodological approaches have been developed, such as cultural consensus analysis and participatory mapping. Many of these recent advances tend to rely on theories of knowledge that focus attention on mental models and discrete, encapsulated, and abstracted aspects of knowledge that can be documented using formal interview methods (e.g., freelists, triads, pile sorts, surveys) (Zent 2009). However, a growing number of anthropologists have found that these approaches and techniques constrain descriptions and obscure the hybrid and heterogeneous nature of indigenous or local knowledge and modes of understanding (see Spoon 2014, Carothers et al. 2014). For example, as Lauer and Aswani (2009) note, “More research is needed to develop approaches and methods that can empirically record aspects of knowledge and understanding that are commonly ignored in indigenous knowledge studies,” in order to, “more fully explore, comprehend, and appreciate indigenous people‛s lives and perspectives in a rapidly changing world (Lauer and Aswani 2009: 327).“ In keeping with this call, many recent approaches to the study of knowledge converge on the recognition that knowledge is embedded in multiple systems of practice, beliefs, values, and power across all scales. As such, new concepts and methods are needed for studying and representing contemporary indigenous knowledge that traverses many different systems of understanding.

Moving beyond panaceas in fisheries governance

In fisheries management—as in environmental governance more generally—regulatory arrangements that are thought to be helpful in some contexts frequently become panaceas or, in other words, simple formulaic policy prescriptions believed to solve a given problem in a wide range of contexts, regardless of their actual consequences. When this happens, management is likely to fail, and negative side effects are common. We focus on the case of individual transferable quotas to explore the panacea mindset, a set of factors that promote the spread and persistence of panaceas. These include conceptual narratives that make easy answers like panaceas seem plausible, power disconnects that create vested interests in panaceas, and heuristics and biases that prevent people from accurately assessing panaceas. Analysts have suggested many approaches to avoiding panaceas, but most fail to conquer the underlying panacea mindset. Here, we suggest the codevelopment of an institutional diagnostics toolkit to distill the vast amount of information on fisheries governance into an easily accessible, open, on-line database of checklists, case studies, and related resources. Toolkits like this could be used in many governance settings to challenge users’ understandings of a policy’s impacts and help them develop solutions better tailored to their particular context. They would not replace the more comprehensive approaches found in the literature but would rather be an intermediate step away from the problem of panaceas.

Interplays of Sustainability, Resilience, Adaptation and Transformation

This chapter analyzes the complex interplays between and among sustainability, resilience, adaptation and transformation, key paradigms and analytical concepts that have emerged from the human-environmental interactions, social-ecological systems, and global environmental change literatures. Specifically, this chapter provides a summary of how these key paradigms and analytical concepts have evolved over time and synthesizes current debates about their interplays. Our findings reveal certain theoretical synergies between and among sustainability, resilience, adaptation and transformation, as well as epistemological tensions and practical tradeoffs when actions are taken to promote ostensibly desirable attributes of social-ecological systems through on-the-ground actions. These findings highlight the need for scholars, practitioners and policy makers to be explicit about the normative assumptions associated with sustainability, resilience, adaptation and transformation as they complement or contradict each other in local contexts, and how they may affect or be affected by the characteristics of and processes within local communities. Such understanding will be crucial for moving towards developing adaptation or transformation interventions that maximize the achievement of sustainability or resilience policy goals and minimize potential negative outcomes on both human well-being and environmental conditions.

Using local ecological knowledge to inform fisheries assessment: measuring agreement among Polish fishermen about the abundance and condition of Baltic cod (Gadus morhua)

Using local ecological knowledge to inform fisheries assessment: measuring agreement among Polish fishermen about the abundance and condition of Baltic cod (Gadus morhua) Elizabeth Figus,* Courtney Carothers, and Anne H. Beaudreau Fisheries Division, University of Alaska Fairbanks, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, 17101 Point Lena Loop Road, Juneau, AK 99801, USA Fisheries Division, University of Alaska Fairbanks, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, 1007 W. 3rd Avenue, Suite 100, Anchorage, AK 99501, USA *Corresponding author: tel: þ1 907 796 5441; fax: þ1 907 796 5447; e-mail: ecfigus@alaska.edu.