Adapting to climate change in small-scale fisheries: Insights from indigenous communities in the global north and south

Climate change is having a significant influence on global fish production as well as on small-scale fishers’ livelihoods, nutrition, and food security. We compared two climate-sensitive small-scale fisheries (SSFs) – an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic and the Coastal-Vedda in Sri Lanka – to broaden our understanding of how fisheries-dependent Indigenous communities respond and adapt to climate change impacts. We used three steps to achieve this comparative study. To do this, we developed a resilience-based conceptual framework to empirically assess adaptations in two SSF communities, based on a literature review. Using the proposed framework and collecting qualitative field data over three years (2016–2019) to investigate how different remote SSFs experience and respond to climate change, we assessed Inuit and Coastal-Vedda case studies. The framework provided the structure for data analysis and conceptual guidance for two empirical assessments and the comparative analysis. Finally, we carried out the comparative analysis across the case studies using content analysis, identifying adaptive strategies, sources of resilience, and characteristics of successful adaptation. Additionally, we used discourse analysis to develop sources of resilience and characteristics of successful adaptation. Two key adaptive strategies emerged in common across the two communities – diversification and adaptive co-management. Eight sources of resilience that underpin adaptive capacity: i) use of diverse kinds of knowledge; ii) practice of different ways of learning; iii) use of community-based institutions; iv) efforts to improve human agency; v) unique worldviews; vi) specific cultural attributes that keep up with adaptation; vii) effective social networks; and viii) a high level of flexibility. Definitive characteristics that need to promote successful community adaptation: continuous learning through knowledge co-production; capacity-building to improve human agency; a place-specific nature (rootedness); collective action and partnerships through community-based institutions; and flexibility.