Toward a Model for Fisheries Social Impact Assessment

This paper presents a model for Fisheries Social Impact Assessment (SIA) that lays the groundwork for development of fisheries-focused, quantitative social assessments with a clear conceptual model. The usefulness of current fisheries SIA’s has been called into question by some as incompatible with approaches taken by fisheries biologists and economists when assessing potential effects of management actions. Our model’s approach is closer to the economists’ and biologists’ assessments and is therefore more useful for Fishery Management Council members. The paper was developed by anthropologists initially brought together in 2004 for an SIA Modeling Workshop by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. Opinions and conclusions expressed or implied are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA.

Environmental and social impact monitoring of the Bujagali Hydropower Project (BHPP), Uganda Fisheries Component: monthly patterns in physico-chemical conditions and fish catch in the immediate vicinity of the Bujagali Hydropower construction site, 29th September - 28th October 2007

Following the commencement of construction works of a 250 MW hydropower plant at Dumbbell Island in the Upper Victoria Nile in September 2007, BEL requested NaFIRRI to conduct continuous monitoring of fish catches at two transects i.e. the immediate upstream transect of the project site (Kalange-Makwanzi) and the immediate downstream .transect (Buyala-Kikubamutwe). The routine monitoring surveys were designed to be conducted twice a week at each of the tWo transects. It was anticipated that major immediate impacts were to occur during construction, and these needed to be known by BEL as part of a mitigation strategy. For example, the construction of it cofferdam could be accompanied by rapid changes in water quality and quantity downstream of the construction. These changes in turn could affect the fish catch and would probably be missed by the quarterly monitoring already in place. Therefore, a major cbjective of the more regular and rapid monitoring was to discern immediate impacts of construction activities by focusing on selected water quality parameters (total suspended solids, water conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH) and fish catch characteristics (total catch, catch rates and value of the catch)

Classification of Coastal Communities Reporting Commercial Fish Landings in the U.S. Northeast Region: Developing and Testing a Methodology

The National Marine Fisheries Service is required by law to conduct social impact assessments of communities impacted by fishery management plans. To facilitate this process, we developed a technique for grouping communities based on common sociocultural attributes. Multivariate data reduction techniques (e.g. principal component analyses, cluster analyses) were used to classify Northeast U.S. fishing communities based on census and fisheries data. The comparisons indicate that the clusters represent real groupings that can be verified with the profiles. We then selected communities representative of different values on these multivariate dimensions for in-depth analysis. The derived clusters are then compared based on more detailed data from fishing community profiles. Ground-truthing (e.g. visiting the communities and collecting primary information) a sample of communities from three clusters (two overlapping geographically) indicates that the more remote techniques are sufficient for typing the communities for further in-depth analyses. The in-depth analyses provide additional important information which we contend is representative of all communities within the cluster.