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ABSTRACT. Small-scale fisheries, which are often associated with low levels of income and poor infrastructure, receive substantial funding from governmental institutions worldwide. Very few empirical studies have explored the outcomes of these investments for people and ecosystems. This paper presents the findings of a study aimed at assessing the social and ecological outcomes of government subsidies for small-scale fisheries through an analysis of 32 fishing villages, referred to as caletas, in Chile over a 12-year period. Findings suggest that the funding appears to be higher for those caletas with the highest value landings and is unrelated to socioeconomic need or poverty; that caletas in rural areas receive less investment than their urban counterparts; that funding did not lead to a positive improvement in either the landings or income for fishers; and, finally, that funding appears to be a consequence of, rather than a reason for, the ecological and productive history of fisheries. These findings challenge two assumptions informing the debate about subsidization in small-scale fisheries: first, that subsidization will lead to over-exploitation, and second, that subsidies are supplied to alleviate poverty.

By overlaying terrestrial and marine perspectives, we examine complex system change at the local scale of the southern Cape and Agulhas Bank in South Africa through placing different knowledge bases on climate variability alongside each other. This research adds insights into how social components of complex systems interact with environmental change and contributes to confirming environmental regime shifts in the research area; identifying knowledge disconnects for ecosystem services linked to terrestrial water availability; and highlights scale disconnects in fisher observations in near-and off-shore change. The benefits of examining these diverse bodies of knowledge in parallel across terrestrial and marine systems are evident in the synergies and disconnects that emerge from our integrative approach. Although impossible to eliminate uncertainty around projected climate variability and change, this multi-evidence base strengthens advice for evidence-based, strategic decision making that is locally relevant. The methodology pursued adds to the global learning on overlaying multiple bodies of knowledge in support of sustainability.

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An important characteristic for the persistence of social-ecological systems (SESs) over time is the adaptation of local institutions to the dynamic of the resources on which they depend, especially when communities face resources with high spatial and temporal variability. Previous studies on Territorial User Rights for Fisheries (TURF) in Chile (Áreas de Manejo y Explotación de Recursos Bentónicos, AMERB) showed that resources with high levels of variability, such as the highly valuable surf clam Mesodesma donacium, can have negative impacts on collective efforts among fishers to govern marine resources under AMERB, resulting in the collapse of local institutions in this boom-and-bust fishery. Here, we reflect on the only known case in Chile (Coquimbo Bay) in which local institutions, its governance mechanisms, and the surf clam M. donacium fishery have persisted over long periods of time, despite disturbances from the natural and social systems. Using participatory techniques, we draw on local fishers' in-depth knowledge of both the resource and their own historical coping mechanisms to understand the potential sources of institutional persistence among local fishers faced with a resource that has high levels of variability. We find that this unique success of a surf clam AMERB in Chile is attributed to the local conditions, such as the roots that fishers have to their village, the support by women and family, and also to the ecological settings of Coquimbo Bay and resource characteristics, that facilitate larval dispersal among the different bays, maintaining recruitment and production that sustains the AMERB. Thus, the persistence of the institution has been built over generations of coping with major disturbances to the SES, directly related to the persistence of M. donacium stocks over time, which has allowed the development of a well-structured institution with a strong fishers' organization, good leaders, a division of labor among members, shared responsibilities, and equitable income distribution.