Recognising patterns of vulnerability in a seagrass-dependent social-ecological system to support place-based management

Lucy Coals, Vedharajan Balaji, Gunasekaran Sundaram, Olivia Fernando, Simon Selvaraj, Benjamin Lawrence Hopper Jones 

Seagrass social-ecological systems are increasingly demonstrated to contribute to the well-being, livelihood opportunities and local economies of millions of people across coastlines globally. Seagrasses are also recognised for supporting endangered, culturally significant biodiversity and fisheries species. In the Palk Bay, Tamil Nadu region of southern India, we use a vulnerability framework to explore household and village scale sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity to social-ecological shocks. Through village consultations and household and key informant interviews with seagrass-dependent fishers, we reveal household- and village- scale vulnerabilities which can be grouped to present potential pathways towards social-ecological resilience. We found that fishing was the primary livelihood of most surveyed households and limited other livelihood options were reported. Households where fishing was the primary livelihood were found to be more sensitive to change than households with alternate primary livelihoods. At a village scale, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity varied independently. Trends in adaptive capacity and exposure were used to inform categorisation of villages into a four-part management complex: priority support sites, co-management opportunity sites, preventative support sites, and stewardship or learning sites. In doing so, this work provides tailored approaches to bottom-up, place-based management in a data-poor small-scale fishery system.