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Modelling and Scenarios workshop: Kenya Coastal Fisheries

A workshop was held to inform Beach Management Unit leaders and coastal communities on project results
Multiple Authors

Introduction

The Whole Decision Network Analysis for Coastal Ecosystems (WD-NACE) project involved partners from the United Kingdom, Bangladesh and Kenya. It builds upon existing knowledge in those regions working with local teams, connecting with policy makers, practitioners, and poor men and women who directly depend on the ecosystem resources to develop conceptual representative tools and models. The intervention was intended to provide decision takers with understanding of both local stakeholder and scientific perceptions of critical elements regarding the use of coastal ecosystem services and of the complex interrelationship between them. The models developed will encapsulate the role of knowledge; how individuals filter knowledge according to their social norms and organizational commitments; plural and competing narratives; the role of boundary actors in knowledge networks; and, finally, what kind of governance allows for constructive learning and collective action to control, adapt, learn and innovate within ecosystem limits.

Using modelling and scenarios

An Agent-Based Model of a Beach Management Unit (BMU) was one of the primary outputs of the project, to explore the possibilities of using such an approach to codify the governance and power relationships that affect fishing effort, and the individual decisions that fishers must take in their day to day activities. A pilot version of the model was shown to the participants, for them to explore its dynamics, and comment on how well it matches their experience. The model was used as a dissemination tool, and to explore how it reveals issues through discussion and feedback among participants.

As the final activity in this project, a feedback workshop was held in Ukunda, on the south coast of Kenya, on 20th and 21st September 2012. The purpose of these feedbacks was to report and give Beach Management Unit leaders and coastal communities some feedback and discussion points that could be incorporated into the model to make it better and to decide whether such a model could be applied at the individual Beach Management Units.

Download the workshop report

See also the WD-NACE End of Project meeting page for slideshow presentations about modelling and screenshots and videos.

Acknowledgement

The ESPA programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), as part of the UK’s Living with Environmental Change Programme (LWEC).

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