UC Santa Barbara

Tourism and small-scale fisheries are two of the most important economic sectors in coastal areas, yet the impact of tourism development on fisheries has been understudied within the SSF literature. Within fisheries, the prevailing narrative views tourism as a sustainable development option that will bring socio-economic benefits to the community and reduce pressure on the fishery. In reality, tourism development presents opportunities as well as significant risks to social and ecological dimensions of the fishery but these interactions and possible outcomes are not well documented in the literature. Proactive fisheries management that is designed to accompany and adapt to tourism development is the best way to maximize benefits and minimize risks. However, to anticipate and plan for impacts requires a better understanding of tourism fishery interactions.

This dissertation research explores how tourism development impacts small-scale fisheries – first synthesizing the fragmented literature to develop a conceptual framework, then investigating these interactions through an empirical case study in coastal Colombia. The conceptual framework encompasses the range of potential fishery impacts and identifies the primary causal mechanisms that create them. Although outcomes vary, this variation is due to difference in contextual factors related to the characteristics of tourism development, sensitivity of the social-ecological system, and mediating or adaptive capacity of local governance. Therefore, the framework can be combined with local knowledge to support more robust site-specific assessments to inform strategic policy and management interventions. This framework increases the legibility of the fragmented literature but also highlights the need for more in-depth study of tourism impacts on fishing livelihoods and resource use.

Within this exiting research, studies document various aspects of tourism-fishery interactions, but it is not clear how they combine to impact total fishing pressure. The addition of alternative livelihoods is widely expected to alleviate pressure on fisheries resources, yet rural development transitions often accelerate exploitation of natural resources. Through a comparative case study of fishing behavior and livelihood engagement in neighboring fishing communities in the Colombian Pacific, I analyze how tourism development impacts community-level fishing pressure, then compare these to tourism impacts on gleaning livelihoods. and consider the implications

Findings indicate that while tourism development leads to a decline in fishery participation, this decline can be more than offset by increases in fishing effort and improvements in fishing methods. This is related to an overall pattern of livelihood specialization and intensification that results in a divergence of household-level fishing behavior — between those that exit the fishery and those that fish more intensively – and an increase in community-wide fishing pressure. However, impacts vary from place to place due to contextual factors in the biophysical environment and socio-political systems that shape how tourism development affects fishing behavior and whether or not it is likely to benefit sustainable small-scale fisheries.

In contrast to fishing, tourism development is associated with a decline and disappearance of gleaning practices. This highlights important differences within the small-scale fishery sector related to labor practices, livelihood engagement, and the socio-economic role of gleaning and fishing. Collectively, these findings can be used to support place-based assessments in order to anticipate impacts, proactively design fisheries management, and inform more sustainable tourism development planning.