Introduction

The premise of the WellFish project is that fisheries conflicts are often fuelled by inadequate understanding of the full impacts of both the fisheries crisis, and policies aimed at mitigating that crisis, on locally affected people, a situation that is especially challenging in the context of poorer countries where capacity to adapt to changing fisheries may be limited. This project seeks to advance conceptual understanding of how the concept of social wellbeing can be used to address fisheries- conservation conflict, and to generate empirical evidence on the ways in which such conflict affects the wellbeing of fishers and their families in developing countries. The project draws from a recently developed conceptual and methodological framework for social wellbeing (see www.welldev.org.uk and also Coulthard et al 2011) and applies it to two regions experiencing fisheries-conservation conflict in South Asia, a region with high numbers of coastal poor who increasingly struggle to adapt to coastal change and declining marine ecosystem services.

Our study regions:

Contribution to knowledge - Whilst the concept of wellbeing is increasingly used in the context of natural resources policy, there is a lack of understanding on the full range of relationships between ecosystem services and the people who are dependent upon them. As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment synthesis report for marine and coastal ecosystems states, "The MA has defined well-being as the basic material needs for a good life, health, good social relations, security, and freedom of choice and action. Many of these elements of well-being are difficult to measure or are not measured adequately, often causing uncertainty or gaps in our understanding (UNEP 2006:29). The proposed project directly contributes to this knowledge gap. First, it offers opportunity to develop conceptually the application of a wellbeing framework to analyze relationships between marine ecosystem services, resource-dependent people and fisheries governance, with a particular focus on added valued with respect to other approaches such as the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, used widely throughout fisheries. Second, the project will adapt and apply a wellbeing methodology to generate a new evidence-base on wellbeing in fishing communities in South Asia, for which there are a wide range of users and beneficiaries.

Engagement with communities and policy makers: The project has a strong commitment to engagement with project beneficiaries through an extensive dissemination plan that includes academic articles, a series of local and regional workshops, and the production of national-level policy briefings. All outputs of the project will be made available on the wellcoast website – watch this space!

Project updates: Wellbeing methods workshop, hosted by the University of Ruhuna, Matara, Sri Lanka June 2011

A five day workshop on wellbeing methods was held at the University of Ruhuna, 13-17th June 2011. The workshop delivered training on both the concept and methodology of wellbeing to a local Sri Lanka research team led by Miss Dilanthi Koralgam and Prof. Oscar Amarasinghe. The workshop also created an opportunity to engage with other research projects on wellbeing and fisheries in Kenya and South Africa. Miss Caroline Abunge (Kenyan Wildlife Service) and Miss Philile Mbatha (University of Cape Town) participated in the workshop and, in collaboration with the WellFish team, have arranged parallel studies on fisheries & wellbeing in their respective regions of research. The workshop also benefitted from the participation of Dr Chris Bene (IDS, Sussex), Dr Nicky Pouw (University of Amsterdam), and Easkey Britton (University of Ulster) who contributed methodological expertise.

The Sri Lanka team are now in the process of further testing and trialling the methods in Rekawa Lagoon. A key output of the workshop is a working document 'Exploring wellbeing in fishing communities: Methodology handbook'. Once finalized, a copy of this will be made available here following the fieldwork period (2012).