Insights from the southern Benguela into adapting social vulnerability indices for local understanding and regional comparability

Abstract Sustainable management of fisheries in complex marine social-ecological systems, such as South Africa’s southern Benguela, requires actionable knowledge of system components and processes at multiple scales. This includes drivers of anthropogenic pressures, such as social vulnerability and gentrification. Aiming at ensuring comparability at the scale of the Atlantic Ocean whilst maintaining the nuance necessary for local relevance, we established a synthetic evaluation of eight indicators contributing to these two drivers by adapting a NOAA Fisheries’ methodology to our context. Using a prototyping approach, we conducted two iterations. Prototype 1 assessed the feasibility by analysing nine well-known fishing communities, while Prototype 2 expanded the analysis to 110 fishing communities in the Western Cape. We used publicly available census data, adjusting the set of candidate variables to capture local conditions related to vulnerability and gentrification. Qualitative indices for fishing engagement and reliance were developed to assess the socio-cultural and economic importance of fishing in the absence of adequate publicly available quantitative data. Focussing on the approach, we discuss lesson learnt from the process and next steps for the development of the set of Southern Benguela indicators before introducing the starting points of a roadmap for possible use in other regions.