Pathways toward Equitable Climate Resilience, Sustainable Fisheries & Tenure Security: A Brief for Funders
Other Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Coastal communities, small-scale fishers and Indigenous People are on the frontline of climate change, bearing the brunt of erosion, extreme weather events, and new water and food insecurities - a global environmental injustice given their negligible role in contributing to anthropogenic carbon emissions. There has been growing criticism that responses to the climate crisis (i.e., funding, policy, action) have failed to account for this reality. Instead, climate responses have been enamored and preoccupied with top down market solutions and techno-fixes , including those purported to ‘fix’ oceans, but when examined critically, are likely palliative and risk exacerbating social and economic existing inequalities. Civil society has raised concerns (e.g., COP 26 and 27 reports) that climate responses are being done to, not developed with, local communities, small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples. Further concerns are expressed around the striking imbalance in ocean and climate funding - of which between 94-99% flow directly to, and through, a handful of powerful groups based in the Global North. There are resounding calls to reshape funding strategies to be more socially relevant, equitable and effective. The purpose of this Brief is to bring forward strategies and actions that help manage, govern and address the impacts of climate change amongst the most vulnerable social groups, particularly coastal and shoreline communities in the World. The Brief integrates data sets, policies, and published literature, alongside insights and practical experiences from a range of experts. It lays out attributes of the current climate funding landscape, including in relation to global commitments made to coasts and communities in climate responses. It briefly describes five domains of climate impact on coastal environments, fisheries, and communities, and then we synthesize data on the global distribution of these impacts. we present five investment pathways that are underinvested relative to technology, infrastructure, and biological investments, but that represent substantial opportunity to address the impacts of climate change as they are experienced by the most vulnerable social groups. We briefly note the barriers that have, to date, stood between more just and effective climate funding and response. The five pathways we describe in this Brief would contribute toward more equitable climate resilience, sustainable fisheries, & security of tenure and rights. Each pathway is strongly place-based, recognizes interactions between social and ecological system components, aligns to globally agreed policy instruments, and invokes principles of interactive governance, which “emphasizes solving societal problems and creating societal opportunities through interactions among civil, public and private actors”. These pathways toward Equitable Climate Resilience, Sustainable Fisheries & Tenure Security do not address the underlying, systemic causes of the climate crisis or global climate injustice. But they do position local communities, small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples, and their human rights and tenure rights, as central in adaptation and mitigation strategies that affect them and the coastal and ocean spaces that they relate to. This Brief was built upon an analysis of the nexus of tenure rights, climate change and fisheries systems and as such the influence of tenure security (and insecurity) on climate resilience of coastal communities and fisheries systems is a central theme. Tenure refers to the ways in which societies (and the law) define and regulate people’s relationships, responsibilities, and associated with land, oceans, shores, aquatic spaces and associated resources. Tenure regimes may be customary (with long histories tied with cultural practices), traditional, and/or contemporary, and are active and recognized by the law in very many parts of the World. Tenure security is experienced when a person or society can be c
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19
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Meridian Institute
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Washington, DC, USA
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DOI
10.5281/zenodo.12787752