Understanding perceptions of climate vulnerability to inform more effective adaptation in coastal communities

Abstract

Coastal social-ecological systems are vulnerable to climate change with impacts distributed unequally amongst human communities. Vulnerability assessments, an increasingly popular methodology for understanding variability in vulnerability and its components, often fail to include or recognize the perceptions of individuals in the focal system. Perceptions of climate vulnerability are influenced by experiences, social networks, and cognitive biases, and often differ from vulnerability as measured by subject experts. Because perceptions influence human behavior, including if and how people take adaptive action, a failure to recognize perceptions can lead to ineffective adaptation plans and an incomplete understanding of system vulnerability. Here, as part of a novel, multi-method effort to evaluate vulnerability to climate change in the California Current social-ecological system, we survey fishers from Washington, Oregon, and California to understand their perceived vulnerability and investigate what factors drive variability in their views. We find that while there is a connection between some factors known to influence vulnerability of fishers, including vessel size and the diversity of fishing portfolios, the most significant predictor of higher perceived vulnerability was environmental worldview, specifically a belief that climate change is occurring. Motivation to adapt is also influenced by the sentiment that the impacts of climate change are more urgent and consequential than other problems; thus, we also evaluate how concern levels for environmental issues compare to other challenges that may affect fishing success and wellbeing. While just under half think that they will be personally harmed by climate change, generally the fishers were more concerned about issues like costs and regulations than they were about environmental impacts. This assessment of perceptions highlights the importance of communication and addressing cognitive barriers to adaptation in the effort to develop climate resilient fisheries and fishing communities in the United States.

Commercial fisher perceptions illuminate a need for social justice considerations in navigating climate change impacts on fisheries systems

“…We elicited commercial fisher perceptions about climate change through an online survey (March 2020 to September 2020). The survey was based on questions developed by the University of Washington (as described in Nelson et al 2023), drawing on earlier work on perceptions of climate change risk broadly (Ballew et al 2019), and in the context of natural resource-based livelihoods, including agriculture Anderson 2017, Cullen et al 2018), and fisheries (Schumann 2018). It also includes established indicators of well-being in coastal social-ecological systems (Breslow et al 2017) and was adapted to the commercial fisheries context of the Canadian Pacific region in a collaboration between the initial designers and those with knowledge of the local context (Harper et al 2022).…”

Stay or go? Geographic variation in risks due to climate change for fishing fleets that adapt in-place or adapt on-the-move

“…Strong social identity related to participation in particular fisheries PLOS CLIMATE could affect fishers' willingness or ability to adapt by shifting to new fisheries or livelihood activities [95,96]. Ideally, future work to understand risk of fishing communities will embrace a participatory approach in which notions of community, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are co-developed [97] and considered alongside perceptions of other risks beyond climate change [98]. Approaches such as fisheries learning exchanges may have the added benefit of building trust amongst stakeholders to allow for increases in flexibility in response to climate change, without jeopardizing ecological sustainability [99].…”

Stay or go? Geographic variation in risks due to climate change for fishing fleets that adapt in-place or adapt on-the-move

“…Strong social identity related to participation in particular fisheries could affect fishers' willingness or ability to adapt by shifting to new fisheries or livelihood activities [93,94]. Ideally, future work to understand risk of fishing communities will embrace a participatory approach in which notions of community, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are co-developed [95] and considered alongside perceptions of other risks beyond climate change [96]. Approaches such as fisheries learning exchanges may have the added benefit of building trust amongst stakeholders to allow for increases in flexibility in response to climate change, without jeopardizing ecological sustainability [97].…”