Integrating climate adaptation into Gulf of Alaska fishing community planning

Abstract

The confluence of climate change impacts on coastal communities includes intensifying natural hazards, decreasing abundance of and access to natural resources, and ecosystem shifts that imperil livelihoods and cultural heritage. Yet, especially in rural communities with complex, dynamic participation in commercial fisheries and marine support industries, adaptation planning continues to be elusive. To capture opportunities for climate change planning, this work reviews multiple categories of local plans for 16 communities and boroughs on the Gulf of Alaska, selected for engagement in commercial fisheries and dependence on coastal infrastructure. This analysis characterizes the components of these local plans relative to a climate change plan framework and evaluates their social resilience capacity with respect to fisheries and marine support industries. This approach reveals that local planning to support fisheries and marine support industries within comprehensive and hazard management plans is largely focused on habitat protection and often unrelated to climate change stressors, even in communities with extreme engagement in coastal industries. Further analysis highlights critical relationships between planning for fisheries and marine support industries and domains of social resilience. In the absence of political will and funds to aid communities in developing standalone climate plans, planning for climate change can and should occur within existing community planning frameworks. This research clarifies how that integration may occur within local plans and suggests pathways for ensuring that integration is successful in including necessary climate plan components that are expansive and inclusive of diverse social resilience domains.