From typhoons to traders: the role of patron-client relations in mediating fishery responses to natural disasters

Details

• Journal Title:
  Environmental Research Letters
• Personal Author:
  Drury O’Neill, Elizabeth ; Crona, Beatrice ; Ferrer, Alice Joan G ; Pomeroy, Robert
• NOAA Program & Office:
  Sea Grant
• Sea Grant Program:
  CONN (Connecticut Sea Grant)
• Description:
  The majority of the world's fishers, fishworkers and their dependents live in coastal tropical areas that are, and will be, highly exposed to human-induced climate change. Projections indicate such change could result in coastal populations being more frequently and acutely impacted by natural disasters. Increasing aid interventions is a likely knock-on effect of such scenarios. How these external natural and social disturbances interact and affect local fisheries and small-scale producers is in part determined by the internal dynamics of the social-ecological system (SES). Economic vulnerability often characterizes communities in these settings and influences the means with which they navigate changes. The patron-client system is prolific in many rural economies and small-scale fisheries. It forms a central element in the organization of market interactions and often provides much needed finance for low-income households in place of formal options. How such injection of capital promotes individuals' ability to buffer income fluctuations at the expense of long-term sustainability of the broader fishery system is still an area in need of examination. This paper contributes to shed light on this issue by using a case study approach to trace the historical development of the fishery system in the Iloilo Province (Philippines) in relation to a major natural disaster—super-typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda—and the subsequent aid intervention that followed. The aim is to assess how the patron-client system filtered these two related disturbances and to highlight the resulting tensions between short-term individual resilience and longer-term SES sustainability.
• Keywords:
  • Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
  • General Environmental Science
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
• Source:
  Environmental Research Letters, 14(4), 045015
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab0b57
• ISSN:
  1748-9326
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  IOP Publishing
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Library
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/62295/noaa_62295_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.90 MB]
• Collection(s):
  Sea Grant Publications
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:84dbd7fb0249fa4663b03cc47724b050dbbeb96415af0c79dcfea2f9fb48cd93b8aa9840e7806fca135b1ba21cf450a059bf9e610eb4d727311094a4a1a06b13