POWRE: Responding to Crisis: Rapid Environmental and Economic Change in the Mid-Gulf of California Fisheries

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This research will investigate the relationship between resource users and the marine environment in two small-scale fishing communities in the mid-Gulf of California, Mexico. Its purpose is two-fold: First, it will look at how fishing impacts and is influenced by fluctuations in regional environmental conditions and market forces. Second, it will examine changes in fishing patterns and household economic diversification strategies as coping mechanisms to deal with a number of severe pressures such as high competition, resource scarcity, increasing economic instability, and significant policy transformations. The research will take a political ecology perspective. It will integrate site specific anthropological research, including the study of local household economic patterns and perceptions of the marine environment, with a more regional analysis of the marine ecosystem using direct biological observations and assessments of fishing technologies. It will also examine local resource users and communities in the context of regional markets, resource management and conservation policies, and competition with external users. This project will contribute to the theoretical and methodological development of political ecology. By acknowledging equally the cultural and the biological and by assessing the nature of environmental changes and trying to understand the actual causes of these changes, this study will contribute to more empirically informed models for the sustainable management of natural resources. This research will also contribute to the sub-field of maritime anthropology by providing an understanding of economic and ecological adaptations to risk in marine environments. The complex situation that will be investigated is occurring in marine areas all over the world and constitutes a significant global scale change in rural life, whose consequences remain alarmingly uncertain. Given the widespread collapse of commercial fisheries, other disciplines are beginning to look at maritime anthropology as a field that has access to a critical part of the puzzle that up to now has been absent from policy. By linking the study of marine resource use, household economics, economic and biological assessments of fishing, and perceptions of the marine environment, this study will contribute a promising approach for the integrated evaluation of policies affecting environmental change and living conditions in coastal communities. The study also will demonstrate that actual human behavior rarely conforms to the behavior assumed by bioeconomic models. Rather, individuals' decisions are based on considerations that combine and mold their social, political, and economic realities with the constraints and limitations imposed by ecological forces. This study, the third one to be carried out in different parts of the Gulf of California by Dr. Vasquez-Leon, will allow for updating of basic fisheries data, re-examination of the larger economic and political contexts, and re-evaluation of the privatization and conservation policies that began in 1991. It will also permit comparisons in space and time, providing a more comprehensive picture of the Gulf of California. This POWRE grant will provide Dr. Vasquez-Leon with a unique opportunity for professional growth at a critical point in her career. After family considerations forced her to interrupt her career for two years, she was able to obtain an institutional affiliation, from which she receives no salary or benefits. This POWRE grant will provide salary, allowing her to continue doing research on human/environmental interactions in marine contexts and also allowing her to complete a book currently under preparation for publication. Thus, it will enhance the potential for her to find an appropriate tenure-track position in the future.