Becky Twohey
I work trans-disciplinary to address environmental problems. I have over 12 years of experience integrating human behavioral ecology, anthropology and conservation science into the design, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) of local and global campaigns. My core strength is building collaborative networks.
SERVICES & RECENT WORK
Project management, including capacity building and deliverables.
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Development, including proposal development, grants management and reporting.
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Communication and outreach, including facilitation, stakeholder research and content development.
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LATEST RESEARCH
All ecosystems today are undergoing continuous environmental change due to human activity, and this is predicted to intensify due to climate change. Consequently, conservation programs are increasingly focused on the response of populations, species, and ecosystems to new conditions. In collaboration with peers from a working group at the International Congress for Conservation Biology last summer, we are investigating all the different management approaches of populations, species, and ecosystems for ongoing change in biotic and abiotic conditions.
RECENT PUBLICATION
Small-scale fisheries are an important livelihood and primary protein source for coastal communities in many of the poorest regions in the world, yet many are overfished and thus require effective and scalable management solutions. Positive ecological and socioeconomic responses to management typically lag behind immediate costs borne by fishers from fishing pressure reductions necessary for fisheries recovery. These short- term costs challenge the long-term success of these interventions. However, social marketing may increase perceptions of management benefits before ecological and socioeconomic benefits are fully realized, driving new social norms and ultimately long-term sustainable behavior change. By conducting underwater visual surveys to quantify ecological conditions and by conducting household surveys with community members to quantify their perceptions of management support and socioeconomic conditions, we assessed the impact of a standardized small-scale fisheries management intervention that was implemented across 41 sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The intervention combines TURF reserves (community-based territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no-take marine reserves) with locally tailored social-marketing behavior change campaigns. Leveraging data across 22 indicators and 4 survey types, along with data from 3 control sites, we found that ecological and socioeconomic impacts varied and that communities supported the intervention and were already changing their fishing practices. These results suggest that communities were developing new social norms and fishing more sustainably before long-term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of fisheries management materialized.
