February 22, 2024 — When it comes to protecting a crucial resource in the face of changing conditions, it’s important to know how the humans reliant on that resource have organized themselves. Especially if there isn’t a lot of government supervision.
A new study of small-scale fisheries in Mexico’s Gulf of California has found that the fishers’ response to a changing climate can be strongly influenced by what they fish for and how they’re organized. The work appears in the January 2024 issue of Global Environmental Change.
“When we study climate change adaptation, we haven’t paid nearly enough attention to how those fishers, these farmers, these water irrigators are organized,” said Xavier Basurto, the Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Professor of sustainability science at the Duke Marine Lab and senior Co-Principal Investigator of this research project.
Their organization, or self-governance, turns out to be key.