Loss and damage in fisheries: Building on fishers’ situated knowledge to inform ways of knowing

Abstract Loss and damage in fisheries is acknowledged in climate change policy and science but is both undefined and contested, and there is a lack of empirical exploration of the topic. This paper presents the first in-depth, empirical analysis of how fishers’ situated knowledge of socio-ecological changes can inform our understanding of loss and damage in fisheries. The paper conducts a case study from Martinique using qualitative methods, and applying an interpretivist approach. The results show that fishers hold knowledge relating to seascapes. This relation is affected by historical socio-ecological processes that intersect with climate change and which have shaped their perception of loss and damage as an issue of social justice. The findings highlight the predominance of environmental loss and damage (e.g. loss of species) and its impacts on fishers’ everyday lives. Yet the findings also reveal the complexity of defining the temporality of environmental loss and damage; by contrast, some societal loss and damage is more definable over time. The findings emphasise that fishers’ knowledge can inform ways of understanding loss and damage. The current understanding of loss and damage is too narrow, being based mainly on extreme events and economic and ex-post valuations. This research emphasises the inherent relationality of loss and damage, both internally and in relation to socio-ecological processes occurring in fishers’ everyday lives, which is informative for adaptation limits and the interactions between society, climate and biodiversity. This paper argues for broader conception of loss and damage in fisheries that recognise situated epistemologies, which are metaphorically shaped by and adaptive to the dynamic movements of seascapes.