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COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya

COVID-19 is continuing to have far-reaching impacts around the world, including on small-scale fishing communities. This study details the findings from 39 in-depth interviews with community members, community leaders, and fish traders in five communities in Kenya about their experiences since the b...

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Autores principales: Lau, Jacqueline, Sutcliffe, Sarah, Barnes, Michele, Mbaru, Emmanuel, Muly, Innocent, Muthiga, Nyawira, Wanyonyi, Stephen, Cinner, Joshua E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8455284/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34566239
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104803
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author Lau, Jacqueline
Sutcliffe, Sarah
Barnes, Michele
Mbaru, Emmanuel
Muly, Innocent
Muthiga, Nyawira
Wanyonyi, Stephen
Cinner, Joshua E.
author_facet Lau, Jacqueline
Sutcliffe, Sarah
Barnes, Michele
Mbaru, Emmanuel
Muly, Innocent
Muthiga, Nyawira
Wanyonyi, Stephen
Cinner, Joshua E.
author_sort Lau, Jacqueline
collection PubMed
description COVID-19 is continuing to have far-reaching impacts around the world, including on small-scale fishing communities. This study details the findings from 39 in-depth interviews with community members, community leaders, and fish traders in five communities in Kenya about their experiences since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020. The interviews were conducted by mobile phone between late August and early October 2020. In each community, people were impacted by curfews, rules about gathering, closed travel routes, and bans on certain activities. Fish trade and fisheries livelihoods were greatly disrupted. Respondents from all communities emphasized how COVID-19 had disrupted relationships between fishers, traders, and customers; changed market demand; and ultimately made fishing and fish trading livelihoods very difficult to sustain. While COVID-19 impacted different groups in the communities—i.e., fishers, female fish traders, and male fish traders—all experienced a loss of income and livelihoods, reduced cash flow, declining food security, and impacts on wellbeing. As such, although small-scale fisheries can act as a crucial safety net in times of stress, the extent of COVID-19 disruptions to alternative and informal livelihoods stemmed cash flow across communities, and meant that fishing was unable to fulfil a safety net function as it may have done during past disruptions. As the pandemic continues to unfold, ensuring that COVID-19 safe policies and protocols support continued fishing or diversification into other informal livelihoods, and that COVID-19 support reaches the most vulnerable, will be critical in safeguarding the wellbeing of families in these coastal communities.
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spelling pubmed-84552842021-09-22 COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya Lau, Jacqueline Sutcliffe, Sarah Barnes, Michele Mbaru, Emmanuel Muly, Innocent Muthiga, Nyawira Wanyonyi, Stephen Cinner, Joshua E. Mar Policy Article COVID-19 is continuing to have far-reaching impacts around the world, including on small-scale fishing communities. This study details the findings from 39 in-depth interviews with community members, community leaders, and fish traders in five communities in Kenya about their experiences since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020. The interviews were conducted by mobile phone between late August and early October 2020. In each community, people were impacted by curfews, rules about gathering, closed travel routes, and bans on certain activities. Fish trade and fisheries livelihoods were greatly disrupted. Respondents from all communities emphasized how COVID-19 had disrupted relationships between fishers, traders, and customers; changed market demand; and ultimately made fishing and fish trading livelihoods very difficult to sustain. While COVID-19 impacted different groups in the communities—i.e., fishers, female fish traders, and male fish traders—all experienced a loss of income and livelihoods, reduced cash flow, declining food security, and impacts on wellbeing. As such, although small-scale fisheries can act as a crucial safety net in times of stress, the extent of COVID-19 disruptions to alternative and informal livelihoods stemmed cash flow across communities, and meant that fishing was unable to fulfil a safety net function as it may have done during past disruptions. As the pandemic continues to unfold, ensuring that COVID-19 safe policies and protocols support continued fishing or diversification into other informal livelihoods, and that COVID-19 support reaches the most vulnerable, will be critical in safeguarding the wellbeing of families in these coastal communities. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-12 2021-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8455284/ /pubmed/34566239 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104803 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Lau, Jacqueline
Sutcliffe, Sarah
Barnes, Michele
Mbaru, Emmanuel
Muly, Innocent
Muthiga, Nyawira
Wanyonyi, Stephen
Cinner, Joshua E.
COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title_full COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title_fullStr COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title_short COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya
title_sort covid-19 impacts on coastal communities in kenya
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8455284/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34566239
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104803
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