Disaster impacts, resilience, and sustainability opportunities for Gili Trawangan, Indonesia: transdisciplinary reflections following COVID-19.

This paper contains transdisciplinary reflections from both scientists and local NGO (nongovernmental organisation) managers on the international small island tourism destination of Gili Trawangan, Indonesia. These viewpoints centre on the impacts of, as well as the short- and long-term adaptation strategies and sustainability opportunities associated with, two disasters that occurred in rapid succession: the earthquakes that struck Lombok in 2018; and the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. A brief review of the governance challenges facing Gili Trawangan sets up the analysis of the findings and the presentation of new empirical insights into how the island's communities have dealt with two unique disaster scenarios over the past three years. The paper draws on a community resilience framework premised on social capital and collective action theories to position the island's ability to transition towards sustainable tourism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes by laying out sustainability opportunities going forward.

Public perception of river fish biodiversity in four European countries.

Public support for biodiversity conservation is shaped by people's values and their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes toward the environment. We conducted the first multinational representative survey of the general public's perceptions of river fish biodiversity in France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. For the online survey, 1000 respondents per country were randomly selected from large panels following country-specific quotas set on age, gender, and educational level. Questions covered people's level of knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes toward river fish, environmental threats, and conservation measures. We found that the public had limited knowledge of freshwater fishes. Two non-native species, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), were widely perceived as native, whereas native Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) was mostly classified as native in Scandinavia and largely as non-native in central Europe. These results suggest an extinction of experience paralleling the extirpation or decline of salmon stocks in countries such as Germany and France. Respondents thought pollution was the dominant threat to riverine fish biodiversity. In reality, habitat loss, dams, and the spread of non-native fishes are equally important. Despite limited biological knowledge, respondents from all countries held an overwhelmingly proecological worldview, supported conservation stocking, and appreciated native fishes, although only a minority interacted with them directly. Differences among the 4 countries related to several conservation issues. For example, threats to biodiversity stemming from aquaculture were perceived as more prevalent in Norway compared with the other 3 countries. Promoting fish conservation based on charismatic species and use values of fishes may work well in countries with a strong economic and cultural link to the freshwater environment, such as Norway. In countries where people rather abstractly care for nature, focusing conservation messaging on broader ecosystem traits and non-use values of fishes is likely to win more support.

Managing River Fish Biodiversity Generates Substantial Economic Benefits in Four European Countries.

Ecosystems and biodiversity produce benefits to society, but many of them are hard to quantify. For example, it is unclear whether European societies gain benefits from experiencing rivers that host high native biodiversity. Without such knowledge, monetary investments into ecologically oriented river management plans are difficult to justify. The objective of this study was to reveal how the public in four European countries values ecological characteristics of domestic rivers and the outcomes of hypothetical river basin management plans designed to improve river ecosystems, particularly fish biodiversity. We conducted a choice experiment among the populations in Norway, Sweden, Germany, and France. We found similar preference structures in all countries with high marginal willingness-to-pay for improvements of abiotic river attributes (increased accessiblity of the river banks, improved bathing water quality, decreased river fragmentation). Citizens also benefited from certain fish species occurring in a river with native salmonid species being more valued than nonnatives, particularly in Norway, and from the degree of a river's native biodiversity. Welfare measures calculated for selected river basin management plans (policy scenarios) revealed societal benefits that were primarily derived from ecological river management whereas a scenario focusing on hydroelectricity production generated the lowest utility. We conclude that ecological river management may produce high nonmarket economic benefits in all study countries, particularly through the management of abiotic river attributes and the restoration of declining or extinct fish species. Our results help to inform decisions on restoration efforts by showcasing the benefits that these measures have for the public.

Analyzing potential effects of migration on coastal resource conservation in Southeastern Ghana.

Coastal areas are under increasing pressure from rapid human population growth, yet empirical research on the effect of migration on coastal and marine resources is scarce. We contribute to this understudied literature by conducting an original household survey in a coastal region of Southeastern Ghana. This study employs two proxies for pro-environmental behavior that have not, to our knowledge, been used in the context of coastal migration, to explicitly compare migrant and non-migrant populations. Environmental attitudes toward coastal resources and individual extraction behavior in common-pool resource (CPR) experiments have shown broad relevance in the literature to understand natural resource decision making. We found that migrants in general did not differ significantly from non-migrants in relation to their environmental attitudes or their extraction behavior in the CPR game. However, when focusing on migrant fishers only, results suggested that this subgroup was less concerned about the utilization of coastal resources than non-migrant fishers and behaved less cooperatively in the CPR experiment. These findings, though, held true only for the subgroup of fishers, and could not be found for other occupational groups. Therefore, we conclude that migrants do not per se value coastal resources less or cooperate less in CPR situations, but that socioeconomic characteristics, and particularly their occupational status and their relation to the resource, matter.

Implementation of a marine reserve has a rapid but short-lived effect on recreational angler use.

Changes in human behavior are a precursor to measurable impacts of no-take marine reserves. We investigated changes in recreational fishing site selection in response to the 2005 announcement of enforcement in a marine reserve in the Gulf of California, Mexico. We used a novel data set of daily self-reported boating destinations from emergency rescue logbooks for a recreational angling community from 2000 to 2008. Because the reserve system has no experimental control, we modeled the data two ways to test for robustness to model specification. We tested for changes in human fishing behavior with regression and fit a fleet-level discrete choice model to project a. counterfactual scenario. The counterfactual is the statistically constructed ex post expectation of the human behavior we would have observed if the reserve never existed. We included month and year fixed effects in our models to account for seasonal and interannual fluctuations in fishing behavior and catch rates. We detected a decrease in reserve use compared to the counterfactual, indicating that the reserve rapidly experienced a decrease in visitation. However, the reserve's effect to reduce trips diminished with time. These results indicate that the reserve is unlikely to meet its ecological goals without institutional changes that enhance compliance. This illustrates the value of human use data to understanding the processes underlying marine reserve function. We suggest that managers should consider human use with the same frequency, rigor, and tools as they do fishery stocks. Marine reserves directly affect people, and understanding human behavioral responses to marine reserves is an important step in marine reserve management.

Fish grabbing: Weak governance and productive waters are targets for distant water fishing.

Distant water fishing occurs worldwide as foreign fleets fish in the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of other states. We test the hypothesis that host state governance performance is an explanatory factor in observed distant water fishing effort using Global Fishing Watch's fishing effort data obtained from vessels' automatic identification system (AIS). We examine the explanatory power of the World Governance Indicators (WGI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, and biophysical fisheries productivity indicators (temperature, oxygen, salinity, nutrients, and primary productivity) on fishing effort from foreign fleets across the four most common gear types (fixed gear, longliners, trawlers, and tuna purse seiners). Our models include both host EEZ fishery productivity indicators and governance indicators with R2 values of 0.97 for longlining, 0.95 trawling, 0.95 for fixed gear and 0.82 for tuna purse seiners. Although a lack of good governance may enable illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has enabled the legal establishment of foreign fishing contracts. However, it is unlikely that fishing contracts are decoupled from economic and political negotiations on other issues. We argue that it is worthwhile to consider the term "fish grabbing", meaning wealthier and politically more powerful states consciously seek to profit from fishing in the waters of often weaker states through developing legal fishing contracts.

Tourist willingness to pay for local green hotel certification.

This study aims to understand tourists' willingness to pay a price premium for a local green hotel certification, and is one of only a few in the literature for small-island tourism destinations in emerging economies with their unique and pressing sustainability challenges. In a survey of 535 tourists visiting Gili Trawangan, Indonesia, facing numerous waste management and coral reef conservation issues, the willingness to pay extra for sustainable hotel services was elicited. There were five discrete pricing levels across the surveys that ranged from $0.75 USD to $7.50 USD extra per night. We examined the relationship of the respondents' payment choice to their socio-demographic attributes and attitudes regarding environmental issues such as climate change. The main findings and practical implications of the study are: (1) to demonstrate the broad willingness to pay for sustainable hotel services. Findings indicate at all price levels (between $0.75 USD and $7.50 USD), more than 50% of tourists are willing to pay. (2) To estimate a lower bound mean willingness to pay per night for a local green hotel certificate of $1.55USD and 1.34€ EUR, and (3) To identify individual attributes that influence willingness to pay. Findings indicate environmental knowledge and preferences play a role. These results can be used generally to incorporate evidence-based practices into the development of a green hotel marketing strategy, and to help define the target market for small-scale green hotel certification. Additionally, we propose a finance strategy for funding local and sustainable initiatives that support the hotel industry and the island's infrastructure through the premiums collected from the 'Gili Green Award' certificate.

Participatory adaptive management leads to environmental learning outcomes extending beyond the sphere of science.

Resolving uncertainties in managed social-ecological systems requires adaptive experimentation at whole-ecosystem levels. However, whether participatory adaptive management fosters ecological understanding among stakeholders beyond the sphere of science is unknown. We experimentally involved members of German angling clubs (n = 181 in workshops, n = 2483 in total) engaged in self-governance of freshwater fisheries resources in a large-scale ecological experiment of active adaptive management of fish stocking, which constitutes a controversial management practice for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning when conducted inappropriately. The collaborative ecological experiments spanned several years and manipulated fish densities in 24 lakes with two species. In parallel, we experimentally compared changes in ecological knowledge and antecedents of proenvironmental behavior in stakeholders and managers who were members of a participatory adaptive management treatment group, with those receiving only a standard lecture, relative to placebo controls. Using a within-subjects pretest-posttest control design, changes in ecological knowledge, environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behavioral intentions were evaluated. Participants in adaptive management retained more knowledge of ecological topics after a period of 8 months compared to those receiving a standard lecture, both relative to controls. Involvement in adaptive management was also the only treatment that altered personal norms and beliefs related to stocking. Critically, only the stakeholders who participated in adaptive management reduced their behavioral intentions to engage in fish stocking in the future. Adaptive management is essential for robust ecological knowledge, and we show that involving stakeholders in adaptive management experiments is a powerful tool to enhance ecological literacy and build environmental capacity to move toward sustainability.