PUBLIC LECTURE: Public Lecture - Dr Tim McClanahan

Title: Addressing the social-ecological values gap.

Abstract: Addressing the social-ecological values gap - Can we find fisheries management solutions that work for people and nature? The call for expanding social-ecological science and metrics for sustainability will require resolving and implementing the issues around the values, desires, and norms of management participants.

The theory of values being illuminated by environmental psychologists and public policy academics have merged into a useful framework where worldviews are seen to influence and compete for control of social norms and actions.

In this lecture, Tim will discuss the current incentives and approaches to solving problems among academics and managers and juxtapose this with the social-ecological problems and needs of artisanal fisheries in the Indian Ocean and how efforts can be better resolved and integrated. He recommends a more permissive approach to values and management options and more focus on directly asking people what they want in management, less focus on social-ecological causation, and more focus on the outcomes of management experiments.

Bio: Tim McClanahan is a coral reef ecosystem ecologist with research interests spanning the fields of marine protected areas, food webs, nutrients, fisheries, climate change, resilience, and the linkages between coral reef ecosystems and the humans who depend on them. He has spent most of his professional life living and working in Kenya, and for the last 20 years has worked as a Senior Conservation Zoologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society, based in Mombasa, on the east African coast. His work has focused on providing solutions to human-coral reef fisheries interaction in poor developing countries.