Abstract
Analyzing different pathways by which social–ecological systems can loose resilience and enter trajectories of collapse constitutes an important aspect of our quest towards understanding resource sustainability. This paper’s goal was to better understand the effect of a particular class of disturbance—the accumulative effects of routine stressors—in the context of marine social–ecological systems. To that effect, we built a system dynamics model using empirically collected institutional and biological field data of an artisanal fishery in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Among our findings, we identified different scenarios under which even very small endogenous changes in the relationship between ecological and institutional variables can send a seemingly resilient system into a trajectory of collapse. We discuss why these types of disturbances are so difficult to prevent and be identified by the users of the resource, as well as potential strategies to address these challenges.
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Notes
For modeling purposes, the surviving rate is modeled as an if then else function set at zero when the total CDH population exceeds the carrying capacity.
That is, the proportion of 1–9 following the age cohorts.
For example, the collapse of the Maya civilization is usually explained by the very severe droughts that happened in the late classic period (Gill 2000). But if the Maya had been able to cope with the droughts, by reducing water consumption, the Maya civilization could have, in theory, survived for many more years.
The re-growth curve represents the logistic pattern predicted by the Beverton–Holt equation, presented in Fig. 7: stocks grow fast at the beginning and slower for large populations. The harvest rate curve represents the amount of CDH harvested by the fleet deployed operating at full capacity.
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Acknowledgments
We remain grateful to the visiting scholar program of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Resilience 2008 Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, 14–17 April 2008. We also acknowledge the Coordination Agency for Improvement of Teaching Personnel (CAPES) of the Brazilian Government and the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT) for their financial support. David Price provided excellent editorial support.
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Bueno, N., Basurto, X. Resilience and collapse of artisanal fisheries: a system dynamics analysis of a shellfish fishery in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Sustain Sci 4, 139–149 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0087-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0087-z