The Flanders Project

As part of the Flanders project, which aims to enhance the resilience of coastal communities to climate change, members of the ABALOBI and WWF teams facilitated and participated in a rapid vulnerability assessment ("RVA") in Hamburg, Eastern Cape.

The RVA involved the participation of several members of the local fishing cooperative. It included various scoping tools and exercises designed to map and explore the context of local fisheries in alignment with social, economic, and environmental processes.

The sessions were conducted primarily in Xhosa, with some English, to ensure participants were completely comfortable and could accurately discuss and explain their ideas and perspectives on their fishery and livelihood. The fishers were interested and actively engaged in the activities.

Objectives

The objective of the RVA was to implement several scoping tools and exercises, including:

1. Socio-ecological mapping: Fishers mapped out social, economic, and institutional factors significant to the entire community.
2. Identifying key stressors, threats, and opportunities for fishers' livelihoods (Governance, Environmental, and Socio-Economic):

• Exploring environmental stressors in depth
• Identifying the causes and impact of the stressors/threats
• Exploring current coping mechanisms, potential adaptation strategies, and support mechanisms

3. Develop a timeline of major changes, impacts or events
4. Identifying institutions, entities, and groups involved in the area, and the level of engagement or relationship between them, which impacts fishers' livelihoods.
5. Value chain mapping: Outlining the entire value chain from start to end, including the roles and responsibilities of the men and women along the value chain.

Beyond these predefined objectives, we aimed to build rapport with the fishers and develop a level of understanding and trust.