Suchergebnisse

Many small-scale fishing and aquaculture households in the global South struggle with reinforcing feedbacks between resource degradation and livelihood impoverishment – a situation that is often resembled to a social-ecological trap. Studies suggest that facilitation of income diversification contributes to mitigation and even prevention of trap situations as it reduces exploitation pressure while at the same time makes the households' livelihood more resilient. Understanding of how income diversification of small-scale fishing and aquaculture households has impacted on social-ecological traps, what impedes or enables income diversification, and how government facilitates income diversification, is crucial to develop effective policies and actions to facilitate sustainable development of small-scale fishing and aquaculture households. Using the Tam Giang lagoon, Viet Nam as a case study, this thesis finds that small-scale fishing and aquaculture households maintain varied income portfolios, including mobile fishing, fixed fishing, earth pond aquaculture, net-enclosed aquaculture, cage aquaculture, and paid labour. Diversification of their income helps to improve the households' well-being. However, as these different income activities still depend on ecologies from one and the same natural environment, the strategy of income diversification accelerates the deterioration of the lagoon, which in turn impoverishes the well-being of its users. As a result, income diversification in this context produces and reinforces a social-ecological trap. This finding suggests that the households need to develop income activities that either depend in radically different ways on aquatic ecologies, or draw sufficiently on other than aquatic ecologies to escape the trap. Yet, both of these options are in practice hard to realize because people lack abilities e.g. education, labour skills, and alternative job opportunities to do so. The households in the Tam Giang lagoon are in need of support to improve their abilities and job ...

The establishment of alternative livelihoods in small-scale fisheries is frequently recommended as a way to restore aquatic resources while at the same time improve fishers' and aquaculturists' livelihoods. Yet fisheries agencies are often unable to facilitate the development of alternative livelihoods through fisheries policies and management. The aim of this article is to investigate why this is so. Based on a case study of the Tam Giang lagoon, Viet Nam, it finds possible explanation includes: (1) failure to integrate an understanding of the realities of the socio-economic conditions and needs of fishing and aquaculture households; (2) lack of motivation, commitment, and capacity to facilitate alternative livelihoods; and (3) lack of support from local governments. Drawing from the literature on small-scale fisheries in the global South, the article suggests that the development of leadership and provision of knowledge of alternative livelihoods to both fisheries managers and local government leaders can help to address these shortcomings.