Environmental and social recovery asymmetries to large-scale disturbances in small island communities
- Aswani, Shankar, Van Putten, Ingrid, Miñarro, Sara
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Van Putten, Ingrid , Miñarro, Sara
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67325 , vital:29073 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2685-2
- Description: publisher version , People’s livelihoods in tropical small-island developing states are greatly dependent on marine ecosystem services. Yet services such as fisheries and coastal buffering are being degraded at an alarming rate, thus making people increasing vulnerable to protracted and sudden environmental changes. In the context of the occurrences of extreme events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, it is vital to uncover the processes that make people in these island states resilient, or not, to environmental disruptions. This paper compares people’s perceptions of social and environmental impacts after an extreme event in the Western Solomon Islands (11 different villages on 8 different islands) to better understand how knowledge systems influence the coupling of human and natural systems. We examine the factors that contributed to perceptions of respective recovery in the environmental versus the social domains across communities with different traditional governance and modernization characteristics in a tsunami impact gradient. First, we separately assessed, at the community and individual level, the potential determinants of perceived recovery in the environmental and social domains. At the community level, the average values of the perceived environmental and social recovery were calculated for each community (1 year after the tsunami), and at the individual level, normally distributed environmental and social recovery variables (based on the difference in perceptions immediately and 1 year after the tsunami) were used as dependent variables in two General Linear Models. Results suggest that environmental and social resilience are not always coupled correspondingly and, less unexpectedly, that asymmetries during recovery can occur as a result of the underlying social and ecological context and existing adaptive capacity. More generally, the study shows how by evaluating post-disturbance perceptional data in tsunami-affected communities, we can better understand how subjective perceptions of change can affect the (de)-coupling of human and natural systems.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Van Putten, Ingrid , Miñarro, Sara
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67325 , vital:29073 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2685-2
- Description: publisher version , People’s livelihoods in tropical small-island developing states are greatly dependent on marine ecosystem services. Yet services such as fisheries and coastal buffering are being degraded at an alarming rate, thus making people increasing vulnerable to protracted and sudden environmental changes. In the context of the occurrences of extreme events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, it is vital to uncover the processes that make people in these island states resilient, or not, to environmental disruptions. This paper compares people’s perceptions of social and environmental impacts after an extreme event in the Western Solomon Islands (11 different villages on 8 different islands) to better understand how knowledge systems influence the coupling of human and natural systems. We examine the factors that contributed to perceptions of respective recovery in the environmental versus the social domains across communities with different traditional governance and modernization characteristics in a tsunami impact gradient. First, we separately assessed, at the community and individual level, the potential determinants of perceived recovery in the environmental and social domains. At the community level, the average values of the perceived environmental and social recovery were calculated for each community (1 year after the tsunami), and at the individual level, normally distributed environmental and social recovery variables (based on the difference in perceptions immediately and 1 year after the tsunami) were used as dependent variables in two General Linear Models. Results suggest that environmental and social resilience are not always coupled correspondingly and, less unexpectedly, that asymmetries during recovery can occur as a result of the underlying social and ecological context and existing adaptive capacity. More generally, the study shows how by evaluating post-disturbance perceptional data in tsunami-affected communities, we can better understand how subjective perceptions of change can affect the (de)-coupling of human and natural systems.
- Full Text: false
Exploring the potential impacts of tourism development on social and ecological change in the Solomon Islands
- Diedrich, Amy, Aswani, Shankar
- Authors: Diedrich, Amy , Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67335 , vital:29074 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0781-x
- Description: publisher version , Pacific Island communities may be vulnerable to negative impacts of economic development, which is often considered a strategy for reducing vulnerability to environmental change. Studies that evaluate potential impacts of economic development in isolated communities may be inaccurate to only focus on asking people to anticipate impacts of phenomena they have had minimal exposure to. We used an open-ended approach to evaluate how communities in the Solomon Islands perceived change, and used this information to anticipate potential impacts of the government’s plans to develop tourism. Our results showed mostly negative expectations of change, particularly socio-cultural, which was perceived as being driven by diminishing social capital, foreign influence, and economic development. Despite minimal exposure, locals supported tourism and had more positive expectations of change associated with this activity. Our findings emphasize the need for locally appropriate planning to ensure intended positive impacts of tourism and other forms of economic development.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Diedrich, Amy , Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67335 , vital:29074 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0781-x
- Description: publisher version , Pacific Island communities may be vulnerable to negative impacts of economic development, which is often considered a strategy for reducing vulnerability to environmental change. Studies that evaluate potential impacts of economic development in isolated communities may be inaccurate to only focus on asking people to anticipate impacts of phenomena they have had minimal exposure to. We used an open-ended approach to evaluate how communities in the Solomon Islands perceived change, and used this information to anticipate potential impacts of the government’s plans to develop tourism. Our results showed mostly negative expectations of change, particularly socio-cultural, which was perceived as being driven by diminishing social capital, foreign influence, and economic development. Despite minimal exposure, locals supported tourism and had more positive expectations of change associated with this activity. Our findings emphasize the need for locally appropriate planning to ensure intended positive impacts of tourism and other forms of economic development.
- Full Text: false
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