Research

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the literature on social-ecological systems (SES) has reflected an increasing interest in resource-dependent coastal communities and how they are particularly prone to the impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, ocean acidification, fisheries decline, and large-scale algal blooms, which exacerbate their economic and environmental vulnerabilities (Bunce et al. 2010a, Bennett et al. 2015a). Although much of the SES scholarship has tended to limit its focus to climate-related changes and how coastal groups and communities mobilize their adaptive capacity at different levels (Cinner et al. 2015, 2018), as well as their adaptation pathways (Adger 2003, Nelson et al. 2007, Shaffril et al. 2017), a growing body of literature has expanded into multiple interacting stressors of varying degrees and scales (Kaplan-Hallam et al. 2017, Freduah et al. 2019). These include global market pressures under the “blue growth” and the expansion of area-based conservation, to name a few, with cumulative effects that intensify coastal communities and groups’ existing vulnerabilities, eroding their capacity to respond and adapt (Kaplan-Hallam et al. 2017, Freduah et al. 2019, Gill et al. 2023).

Thus, growing research on adaptive capacity and cross-scale vulnerability has explored the complexities of communities’ and groups’ (e.g., small-scale fisheries) perceptions and local responses to these changes in different geographical settings. In coastal Africa, for instance, research identified how communities are becoming more vulnerable over time because of a vicious cycle of resource degradation and food insecurity caused by a combination of, and closely linked, climate variability, ongoing water and food shortages, disease (human, crop, livestock), and farm and fishery declines (Bunce et al. 2010b). Regional and international policies could add stress, contributing to riskier and less diverse livelihoods in communities that erode their capacity to adapt (Bunce et al. 2010a). Similarly, Bennett et al. (2014) demonstrated how communities on the Andaman coast of Thailand are negatively affected by climate change and fisheries declines yet have limited knowledge of their causes and actions to mitigate their impacts, resulting in coping and reactive measures. Moreover, the authors showed that communities presented overall low and uneven levels of adaptive capacity to economic stressors, marine conservation policies, and new livelihood opportunities such as tourism and agriculture (Bennett et al. 2014).

Closely related, SES scholarship has shown that small-scale fisheries (SSF) are particularly exposed to multiple social and environmental interacting stressors, with profound implications for their adaptive capacity. For instance, Nayak and Berkes (2019) analyzed how global drivers (including market pressures and biophysical changes) interact in a two-way process with local drivers of change in SSF in the Bay of Bengal, India. This interplay can exacerbate vulnerabilities simultaneously, from global to local, but also local to global (e.g., the disintegration of Chilika Lagoon’ SSF impacted national governance indicators and overall community adaptive capacity). Similarly, in coastal Mozambique, Blythe et al. (2014) showed that adaptation to multiple livelihood stressors, such as declining catch rates, disease, theft, food insecurity, and climate change, can be a heterogeneous process even among specific local groups, where specialized fishers adapted by intensifying fishing efforts while more impoverished fishers adapted through livelihood diversification (Blythe et al. 2014).

Although the flexibility of livelihoods is crucial for better adaptation of SSF (Blythe et al. 2014), so is the role of networks and different capitals, such as cultural, political, and social (Marín 2015, Freduah et al. 2018, Lopez de la Lama et al. 2018). In the context of SSF in Chile, studies have found an overall positive role of networks and social capital in accessing and mobilizing valuable resources and information to achieve collective goals, as well as expressions of adaptive capacity (Marín et al. 2012, Marín 2015, Marín 2019). Similarly, Tam et al. (2021) found that “collaborative social learning” correlates with positive ecological and social conservation outcomes among SSFs in Chile. These included the willingness to learn from peers and confidence in institutional monitoring toward conservation (Tam et al. 2021).

Despite increasing recognition of multiple interacting stressors of varied nature, with both positive and negative implications for adaptive capacity in coastal communities and SFF, most of the empirical studies mentioned have overlooked the role of social conflict as a response and a driver of change, both in itself and within the broader complexity of SES interactions. As Kaplan-Hallam et al. (2017) showed in their study in Rio Lagartos, Mexico, conflict and violence that emerged from rapid-onset social stressors (sea cucumber fishery “fever”) and its interaction with slow social changes (e.g., reduced work opportunities, migration, housing pressures), affected negatively the SES’ structure, functions, and feedback and its adaptive capacity. Thus, the authors reinforce the need for the literature to better differentiate the social and ecological implications of shocks in responses, adaptations, and adaptive capacity of SES (Kaplan-Hallam et al. 2017). In addition, the link between social components, such as power imbalances, social conflict, and abrupt changes, including regime shifts, in SES has been acknowledged as poorly understood both empirically and theoretically (Nayak et al. 2016).

Thus, in this study we aim to contribute to this gap by analyzing the aftermath of the 2016 red tide/salmon farming crisis in Chiloé, Chile (Fig. 1). The case offers a compelling empirical example of the confluence of multiple SES phenomena: social conflict as a response and driver of change and the co-occurrence of industrial (30 years of intensive salmon farming industry), SSF, and climatic changes. This complex confluence was materialized in the 2016 social movement known as “Chilotean May” (Mayo Chilote), where residents of Chiloé staged a general strike against the consequences of the most harmful outbreak of red tide seen in the Island’s history early that year, with record mortality of different species affecting fisheries value chain workers, as well as against the management of the co-occurrent sanitary crisis in the salmon industry that trigger authorized dumping of 9000 tonnes of dead salmon into the coast (Armijo et al. 2020). The conflict sparked the most prominent social movement in the region’s history, garnering national and international coverage, and challenging the centralized governance of the Island (Bustos and Román 2019). Although the movement was a reaction to the environmental shocks that Chiloé experienced in early 2016 (Delamaza et al. 2023), it can also be considered a rapid driver of change itself, with unknown impacts on the communities’ adaptive capacity.

Coastal communities such as Chiloé, which are subject to rapid climate-related changes in the biophysical environment (e.g., algal blooms), as well as heavily dependent on SSF and the rapid transformation embedded in industrial activities, represent a complex SES with multiple exposures (Gill et al. 2023). These transformations often clash with traditional ocean users, leading to conflicts that, on the one hand, may result in adverse outcomes such as dispossession, injustice, and marginalization (Tafon et al. 2022). On the other hand, conflict can lead to positive transformation toward better management (Villamayor-Tomas and García-López 2018) and better sustainability outcomes (Blythe et al. 2018, Tafon et al. 2022). Thus, understanding people’s perceptions of the crisis and their capacity to adapt in the aftermath becomes crucial to finding ways to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience. Given these elements, this research has two objectives. First, we aim to describe the perceptions of key stakeholders regarding the multiple social and environmental shocks experienced during the 2016 crisis. Second, we explore how these shocks and the subsequent social movement events impacted their social adaptive capacity.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

SES and adaptive capacity

Although adaptive capacity has many definitions, it is broadly defined as “the ability of [a] social-ecological system (or components of that system) to be robust to disturbance and capable of responding to change” (Plummer and Armitage 2010:1). A point of consensus among theorists is the latent adaptive capacity nature, which creates an empirical challenge for research (Engle 2011), in addition to the difficulties posed by different interacting scales and contexts (Vincent 2007, Mortreaux and Barnett 2017). Recent approaches to adaptive capacity, with an SES focus on coastal communities, have summarized the main domains in which it is built (Whitney et al. 2017, Cinner et al. 2018). The work of Whitney et al. (2017) is especially relevant because of the authors’ distinction between ecological, social, and coupled social-ecological adaptive capacity at different scales. In this sense, social adaptive capacity is defined as the ability of human actors and communities to respond to change and maintain human well-being over time, where its components are summarized into four categories: (a) institutions and governance; (b) access to assets; (c) diversity and flexibility; and (d) knowledge and learning (Whitney et al. 2017). For this paper, the categories that informed the qualitative local-scale approach used to understand the social adaptive capacity to multiple stressors (e.g., social, political, environmental domains that alter people’s lives), which guided our results, are summarized in Table 1.

“Learning and knowledge” refers to people’s capacity to evoke, absorb, and create knowledge and information from diverse sources (experiential, memory, scientific, etc.) to manage uncertainty (Folke et al. 2003, Cinner et al. 2018). “Flexibility and diversity” reflect structural dependencies (livelihood, resources, place, and occupation attachments) and opportunities for switching strategies that take advantage of potential options (Bennett et al. 2014, Cinner et al. 2018). “Access to assets” refers to the individually owned or public good resources communities or groups that have access to well-being (Cinner et al. 2018). Finally, “institutions and governance” encompasses the social interactions and practices between decision making and rule-making systems, as well as institutions, civil society organizations, actors, and networks that manage social-ecological changes and challenges (Plummer and Armitage 2010, Whitney et al. 2017).

Uncertainty, changes, and crisis in SES

SES are inherently uncertain because of their complex changing nature and scale dependencies, challenging human knowledge and predictability (Berkes 2007). Although future uncertainties hamper adaptive capacity, robust strategies for adaptation accept this characteristic (Folke et al. 2004), yet how people deal with uncertainty appears to increase or decrease the system’s resilience (Gunderson 2003). However, changes in SES are far from simple, and they can take a variety of forms ranging from gradual or incremental to abrupt, surprising, disorienting, and even turbulent (Folke et al. 2004). Whereas slow changes can lead to steady progress toward adaptation, abrupt change or unexpected behavior (“surprise”) can challenge the system’s understanding, leading to ambiguous and unclear actions (Gunderson 2003, Folke et al. 2004). According to Walker et al. (2012), the different terms used to characterize variations of time and scale, such as “shocks” and “drivers,” cause confusion in discussing the dynamics of SES. For this paper, we will distinguish between “slow” (trends) and “fast” (shocks) drivers of change (Kaplan-Hallam et al. 2017). Their interaction can lead to rapid changes: a new system state (regime shift; Folke et al. 2004), or “crisis,” which is also linked to the erosion of resilience (Folke et al. 2005), focusing on the lack of capacity to manage ecological surprises at the policy or collective behavior level (Gunderson 2003). Nevertheless, in “crisis,” the idea of opportunity is highlighted: “Crisis, perceived or real, seems to trigger learning and knowledge generation and opens up space for new management trajectories of resources and ecosystems” (Folke et al. 2005:446). In this paper, the concept of “crisis” will be broadened to encompass the interaction of shocks and trends from diverse sources (social, ecological, political, and economic) that challenge governance and overall adaptive capacity (see Table 2).

Collective action, ocean conflict, and social movements

Conflict seems inherent to coastal users and initiatives (fishers, marine conservation, extractive industries, etc.), embedded in struggles over identity, resources, access, terms of use of space, and the distribution of benefits (Tafon et al. 2022). Moreover, recent coastal transformations under “blue growth” have triggered new conflicts, exacerbating existing injustices among traditional users (Bennett et al. 2015b, Blythe et al. 2018, Bennet et al. 2021). Despite this, literature on adaptive capacity has undertheorized the role of conflict, collective action, and social mobilization. Similarly, although the commons framework (Ostrom 1990) highlights collective action as a key condition that enables successful resource management (Nayak 2021), this scholarship often adopts a managerial focus, downplaying the dynamics of power and conflict (Armitage 2007). Recent work has sought to bridge commons theory and social movement scholarship to fill this gap, emphasizing how social mobilization enhances natural resources management, promoting collective action over perceived injustices and pursuing alternative agendas (Villamayor-Tomas and García-López 2018, 2021a, Villamayor-Tomas et al. 2022).

In this paper, we will distinguish between the concepts of conflict, collective action, and social movements based on ocean conflict theorizations (Tafon et al. 2022), social movements theory (Tarrow 1998), and commons movements (Villamayor-Tomas and García-López 2018, 2021a, 2021b, Villamayor-Tomas et al. 2022), in order to strengthen the adaptive capacity framework and the overall research problem without getting into the nuances of each scholarship (Table 2).

According to Tafon et al. (2022), ocean conflict can take many forms: non-linear, interactive, emergent, deep-rooted, latent, or manifest, and often characterized as local (although often fueled by global issues). Based on Tarrow’s (1998) notion of “contentious politics,” we will establish that any collective action driven by conflict becomes contentious when ordinary people (often with allies) confront elites or authorities over contested claims. Further, social movements represent a sustained sequence of contentious acts capable of challenging political structures (Tarrow 1998). Therefore, not all contentious collective actions qualify as social movements: the former may be short-lived or institutionalized, whereas the latter possesses four empirical properties: a collective challenge, shared purpose, social solidarity, and sustained interaction (Tarrow 1998).^[1]

RESEARCH SITE

Chiloé is an archipelago in southern Chile, comprising 10 municipalities and 20 inhabited islands, including the Isla Grande (Big Island), and a total population of 168,185^[2] people (Fig. 2). The primary livelihoods were artisanal fishing, agriculture, and livestock farming until the 1980s, when the salmon farming industry established itself in several locations in Chiloé and experienced rapid growth (Pavéz 2016). By 1994, Chile became the world’s second-largest exporter of farmed salmon after Norway and was poised to become the leading exporter in 2007 before a crisis caused by a virus called ISA (infectious salmon anemia) resulted in the closure of salmon farms and processing plants and about 15,000 job losses (Bustos 2016). Despite this event, the salmon industry survived in the region thanks to restructuring efforts and the Chilean State’s support (Bustos 2016). Similarly, Chile’s mussel mariculture is also located in the inner sea of Chiloé. Since the 1990s, this industry has had a massive growing rate, with a record year in 2017 exceeding 300,000 tons of production, despite experiencing various crises due to microalgal food (2009–2010), larval supply (2011–2013), and other multiple disturbances (e.g., market prices fluctuations; San Martin et al. 2020). Today, Chiloé is a landscape of constant transformation, characterized by a hybrid economy where artisanal fisheries remain an important activity^[3] (SERNAPESCA 2024), as well as extractive industries, aquaculture, services, municipal employment, and tourism, which paradoxically coexist with traditional culture, rurality, and isolation (Román et al. 2016).

“Mayo Chilote”

In early 2016, an initial outbreak of Pseudochattonella verruculosa led to the mass mortality of farmed salmon, triggering a sanitary crisis. A subsequent outbreak of Alexandrium catanella (red tide) affected the archipelago from February to May (Red Tide Committee 2016). During the latter month, residents staged a general strike for 19 consecutive days. Barricades, public demonstrations, and protests were held in every city on the Island, while at the national level, other protests drew attention to the socioeconomic and environmental disaster affecting the Island’s inhabitants. SSF workers were seriously affected by record mortality levels of marine species inflicted by the bloom. Millions of mussels, clams, birds, and sea lions were found dead along the coast of Chiloé. Social organizations subsequently revealed that the salmon farming industry had, during the same period, dumped 9000 tonnes of dead fish into less than 75 nautical miles off Chiloé’s shore, with the national government’s authorization because of the sanitary crisis (Thomas 2018). The movement’s demands^[4] focused on investigating the cause of the red tide, auditing the salmon dumping, and providing compensation for fishers (Radio Universidad de Chile 2016; Fig. 3).

The unusual intensity of the red tide has been linked to the effects of El Niño, climate change, and increased nutrients resulting from the presence of aquaculture. However, no conclusive scientific evidence exists that climate change caused the red tide episode (Cabello et al. 2018).

METHODS

A qualitative approach was employed to characterize key stakeholders’ perceptions of the “Mayo chilote” and its impact on social adaptive capacity. Data was collected through 28 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted by the principal investigator between 15 May and 28 June 2018,^[5] in five cities of Chiloé (Ancud, Dalcahue, Castro, Chonchi, and Quellón).^[6] The criteria for interviewees were people who were highly involved in the Mayo Chilote from different sectors (see Table 3), recruited through phone and e-mail, overall using a snowball method of purposive sampling until reaching the saturation point, with initial leads from local contacts and researchers.^[7] Audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed in NVivo (version 12) to open code each interview, allowing for the identification of dimensions and components of social adaptive capacity while also leaving space for emergent themes. A second codification process in Excel allowed a more detailed iterative review of the initial coding process for validation purposes (Appendix 1). Data collection also included a document review of changes in laws, regulations, policies, and official statements regarding the conflict from 2016 to 2018 (Appendix 2).

Although adaptive capacity scholarship distinguishes between assessing and characterizing adaptive capacity (Engle 2011), this research builds on the latter. Perceptions are used as evidence of people’s beliefs about what happened, why, and how this led to a social movement, which then influenced their social adaptive capacity. The scale is non-local to the extent that it encompasses governance related to federal actors and actions, given Chile’s highly centralized administration.

RESULTS

Learning and knowledge: what are people’s knowledge and lessons from the crisis?

Participants offered several narratives regarding their knowledge of disturbances such as the red tide causes, stranding of shellfish, and salmon mortality, most of them saturated with uncertainty. Participants did not trust official reports on the causes of the environmental crisis, which focused on climate-driven causes of the red tide and other harmful algal blooms, ignoring the role of the salmon farming industry. For example, the independent Association of Marine Biologists released a statement that identified El Niño and global warming as the leading causes of the red tide and the stranding of marine species. On the contrary, interviewees, including fishers, Indigenous leaders, and local authorities, perceive that the red tide may be a natural phenomenon, but it was exacerbated by pollution caused by salmon farming over the past 40 years. [Note, interviewee names below are fictitious.]

Of course, it is the fault of the salmon farming industry. The red tide ... everybody talks about the climatic causes, but no one talks about the nutrients. So, yes, there is a climatic factor, but that is only one (Ricardo, Artisanal fisher).

Also conflicting with the official reports are perceptions of the cause of the stranding of shellfish and other marine species on the coast. The National Committee on Red Tide, formed in June 2016 to investigate the crisis, dismissed the idea that salmon dumping could have worsened the toxic bloom. However, most interviewees, including local authorities, believed that the salmon dumping directly caused the stranding of shellfish and other coast species.

We received all the small-scale fisheries dead. But they weren’t dead; they were intoxicated. Many birds and sea lions were found dead. That’s not the usual behavior of the ride tide. Red tide should not affect marine mammals, fisheries, and birds (Mariana, Activist).

Further, the crisis was seen not only as driven by ecological shocks, but also by contested understandings of their causes. Participants consistently acknowledged the social movement’s magnitude and duration as the most significant in the history of Chiloé, but a sense of confusion prevails regarding the demands and resolutions of the strike. Some narratives stated that the movement’s claims were only centered on the artisanal fisher’s economic needs because of the impact of the red tide. Some participants asserted that the central claim behind the movement was the salmon dumping that triggered people’s discontent with the industry. Other interviewees perceived that it was both. Despite these differences, most interviewees agreed that the movement’s magnitude and support amongst Chiloé’s communities, as well as nationally, was due to unresolved historical claims about poor federal support for the community: lack of public assets such as health infrastructure and services, lack of public investment in education or road infrastructure to connect isolated communities.

We saw that this wasn’t only a biological crisis; there were certain elements of the social and historical construction of vulnerability in Chiloé that made this event so intense (Evelyn, ENGO).

Conversely, participants also expressed positive knowledge outcomes despite contested explanations, including the creation of new spaces and platforms to share a diversity of knowledge and information regarding social and environmental issues that affect the territory. Open seminars with guest scientists are now frequent and are typically organized by social organizations and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). The movement also provided an opportunity to be more aware of the salmon farming industry’s practices and other environmental problems. According to most participants, for the first time in 40 years, public opinion presented a new, critical view of the salmon industry both locally and nationally. A few participants also acknowledged that the Chiloé crisis helped other territories fight against the expansion of the salmon farming industry. An example is the Magallanes region in southern Chile, where Kawashkar Indigenous communities stopped salmon farming concessions in 2017 and 2018.

The Chilotean May was a furious stampede, growing and growing because people started to inform themselves about what was happening, including about 35 years of salmon industry (Ricardo, Historian).

Access to various sources of knowledge and information has also created a more pervasive perception of risk in the communities. Most participants expressed their fear that Chiloé is on its way to becoming an environmental zona de sacrificio (sacrifice zone), where salmon farming, water scarcity, and mining concessions threaten the future of the Island. Dystopic environmental change dominates their narratives, including the discourses of local authorities. Notably, these future visions do not involve climate change. Their concerns center on a future where industrial resource extraction leads to pollution, social-environmental degradation, and poverty.

I think of Chiloé as a catastrophe in terms of environmental issues. We have water scarcity, and if mining companies come, they will contaminate everything, so there is no going back. I see Chiloé as a desert Island; in 30 years, nobody will be able to live here (Gabriela, Fisher).

Flexibility and diversity: livelihood dependencies and opportunities post-crisis

Most interviewees recognized that the 2016 events showed the high resource dependency of the communities on SSF and how vulnerable they are in the face of an environmental crisis.

... We are the second largest region of Chile in artisanal fishing. We export fifty percent of the sea urchins nationally and more than eighty percent of the national export of clams to Spain. Is not a livelihood that is getting lost over time (Milton, Fisher union leader).

This perception also extends to the salmon industry; the algal blooms that affected salmon left many people in the industry without jobs. Although some participants blame salmon farming for Chiloé’s marine degradation, they also acknowledge the complexity of removing the industry from the territory. Thus, most of their narratives characterize the salmon industry as a trade-off between environmental rights and employment.

I believe that salmon farming is a necessary evil because there are lots of people working there (Pedro, Diver).

Concerns regarding livelihood opportunities are strongly present in the interviewees’ discourses because of this high marine resource dependency. Artisanal fishers, Indigenous leaders, and social organizations believe that livelihood diversification should be the path to reducing dependency on salmon farming and fisheries. Local authorities have adopted the concept of “livelihood conversion,” that is, abandoning artisanal fishing and embracing new livelihoods. Nevertheless, all participants agreed that tourism and agriculture are the alternative livelihoods communities should exploit to adapt to the current social-ecological challenges. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the type of tourism that should be pursued. Although local authorities target mass tourism, fishers and social organization leaders question this approach as environmentally and culturally unsustainable. According to them, the real challenge is diversifying into sustainable and inclusive tourism, where everybody is involved, including fishing activities.

The problem with tourism is that people think it is the flawless antidote when we know that cities that live from tourism are also very environmentally stressed (Manuel, Social organization).

After the crisis, national and local governments have promoted agriculture as a feasible livelihood. Chiloé is one of only three places in America that have received the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System^[8] (GIAHS) approval from the FAO-UN because of its great variety of native potatoes. Thus, most participants perceived agriculture as a historical local practice and a sustainable livelihood opportunity, although not free from severe social and environmental problems, including water scarcity, aging of the rural population, and real estate speculation.

Besides the environmental challenges, interviewees suggested that artisanal fishers have a very high economic and cultural attachment to occupation, so their willingness to adapt is limited.

Some fishermen do not know how to do anything else, so they refuse to do other activities. Moreover, that is their right. People should not be forced to do anything besides what they already know or have been trained their whole lives (Ricardo, Fisher leader).

Institutions and governance: how did the crisis affect them?

The multiple shocks experienced during early 2016 triggered a broad social movement. Different repertoires of conventional collective action were deployed during 19 days of mobilization: marches, public demonstrations, and barricades. Although some innovations drew national and international attention to the movement, such as cultural performances that highlighted the characteristic identity of Chiloé, the movement became well-known for its non-violent nature, unlike other social movements in Chile^[9] (Jiménez-Yañez 2020). Interview participants highlighted their capacity to organize themselves despite the Island’s length and the socioeconomic differences between the various cities of Chiloé.

The Mayo Chilote triggered ... 200 km of barricades, which is not anecdotal. It is a demonstration of insular frustration condensed in barricades and assemblies. It was a decolonizing milestone (Esteban, NGO).

Different networks formed between social organizations, political parties, fishers’ unions, NGOs, and even religious groups during past collective actions on Chiloé, such as the “movement for dignified health” in 2013 (Arriagada 2016), were mobilized and consolidated. Participants agreed that they mobilized larger networks, including those outside the Island, where Greenpeace played a crucial role in gaining national and international visibility. However, a consensus amongst participants believes the movement became fragmented after negotiations with the government, primarily because of a sense of failure and disappointment about the conflict resolution. Expressions of distrust dominated their analysis regarding networks and ties between the communities and state institutions.

Since the Mayo Chilote trust was lost in SERNAPESCA [National Service of Fisheries and Aquaculture], regional government, and from there to the top. ... there is an absolute distrust against the institutions involved [in the conflict]. There was a total discredit to science because there were scientific reports that, depending on the author, said one thing or another (Valeria, ENGO).

Although participation in decision making was deficient before the conflict, participants recognized that it worsened after the crisis. They believe there are more obstacles to organizing themselves, influencing policies, or accessing valuable resources and information. Women experience difficulties in this matter; female interview participants accused movement leaders and institutions of gender discrimination. Although women were on the barricades, men were primarily involved in the negotiations to resolve the conflict, contributing to women’s distrust.

Since May 2016, I haven’t seen any protest or collective action. It feels like people felt so defeated ... and just decided to go home (Carla, Political organization).

The factors behind the distrust between communities and institutions can be traced back to long before the conflict. According to the participants from the fishing sector, fisheries institutions were “corrupted” long before the crisis. Specifically, negative perceptions regarding the General Fishing and Aquaculture Law n° 20.657 from 2012 were shared, viewing the law as an obstacle to their everyday practices. Participants from all groups, including local authorities, stated that environmental and fishing institutions today constrain artisanal fisher’s livelihoods. Monitoring and enforcement mechanisms are severe, in contrast to the lack of inspections for industrial fisheries and salmon farms.

If you go to get the Artisanal Fisher Registry, they will give you the license of a harvester, which is the lowest category. But that license only allows you today to harvest algae, which is stupid; we are an island, and we need to collect shellfish from the shores. But if you harvest shellfish, you will get caught. So the law forces you into illegal activity (Ricardo, Fisher leader).

Similarly, most interviewees held negative perceptions regarding the central government’s role. Although the main point of negotiation was the monetary compensation (temporary subsidy) received by artisanal fishers affected by the red tide, this point was also the most controversial because of its short-term orientation and the lack of rigor or governing integrity when identifying the beneficiaries.

The first day, the fishers claimed that the subsidy was going to be 150 mil pesos (US$157) divided into three payments and only to benefit 3 thousand fishers, and only in Ancud we have 10 thousand, so they couldn’t accept that because it was a joke. Twenty days later, they accepted the same offer from the government. The whole thing was an absolute defeat (Braulio, Political organization).

Government compensation also sought to encourage livelihood diversification into agriculture. According to interviewees, many coastal inhabitants, in addition to working as small-scale fishers (SSF), are also small-scale farmers. Under the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Development Institute (INDAP) provided credit to clients of their programs affected by the red tide. It encouraged fishers to participate in programs that could benefit them through the provision of agricultural gear and technical support. However, participants from the public sector in charge of these programs admit that the extent of the aid was minimal and short to medium-term compared with the high number of people affected by the crisis.

Regarding the movement’s demand for scientific research, the central government only partially fulfilled this commitment by appointing a Red Tide Committee to assess the crisis. However, most participants distrust the Committee’s results, claiming that the salmon farming issues were ignored. The movement’s demand for strict monitoring of the salmon industry was assessed by the General Comptroller of Chile, which, in late 2016, audited SERNAPESCA and Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture (SUBPESCA), establishing that these two institutions had severe shortcomings in the supervision of salmon aquaculture. Despite these reports, interviewees from all sectors, including local authorities, believe that these audits are only symbolic because the supervision of the salmon industry has not increased.

I am also the President of the central worker’s union, and for five years, we have been asking SERNAPESCA to get a boat. It is absurd. The inspectors call aquaculture centers and say, “Please come and pick me up at the shore,” so they clean everything because they know beforehand that inspectors are coming. I know that ... I have worked for 17 years in the salmon industry (Pedro, Diver).

National governance of the crisis also impacted regulations and policy changes. In 2017, SUBPESCA created a new environmental decree that modified aquaculture environmental regulations (D.S. N°320 from 2001). The decree added a protocol and contingency action plan that salmon farms must enact in case of massive mortality, where the daily maximum capacity (15 tons) to store dead products is exceeded. In such circumstances, aquaculture centers must alert the Health Service, Marine Authority, and the Environmental Superintendent and activate the plan.

Although this policy outcome is perceived as a significant victory of the movement, many participants observed that the most significant achievements resulted from judicial decisions against those responsible for salmon dumping. On 22 May 2018, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the lawsuit recurso de protección presented by four fisher’s unions, against the institutions that authorized the dumping of 9000 tonnes of salmon off the coast of Chiloé: SERNAPESCA, DIRECTEMAR, Regional Secretariat of the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Environment. The Supreme Court declared that: “the actions of the accused have been far from the laws and regulations that rule environmental and sanitary emergencies, as well as those that lead the protection of the environment, injuring the right of our Constitution Art. 19, N° 8, that is, the right to live in an environment free of contamination.” The decision required that the defendant institutions adopt preventive and corrective measures within two months. At the same time, research must continue to develop better management measures to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. Even though the Supreme Court supported the claims of the social movement, some interviewees still felt uncertain about the practical impacts of the decision and the new regulations governing large-scale mortality at salmon farms.

The Court resolution ... what is its practical translation? Besides that, institutions were found guilty of their actions, nobody knows (Jorge, City Mayor).

DISCUSSION

The results presented describe how trends, such as aquaculture, climate effects, and historical unattended demands toward the centralized government, collided with shocks (algae blooms, stranding of shellfish, and salmon dumping), which, through the medium of social conflict, resulted in a social-ecological crisis leading to knowledge and livelihood uncertainty, as expressed in people’s perceptions. Contested knowledge narratives are present regarding the causes and likelihood of environmental changes such as algal blooms, stranding of shellfish, and other marine degradation events, as well as the social movement’s demands. Instead of agreeing on new information to respond better to these environmental shocks, the results show how a crisis destabilizes knowledge, creating opposing narratives of events. Mascareño et al. (2018) showed in the same case study that an inextricable opposition was created in explaining the crisis, dividing government/scientists versus fishers/NGOs. According to our analysis, knowledge uncertainty is expressed across the discourses of fishers, NGOs, Indigenous communities, political organizations, and local authorities. Governments and scientists were perceived as ignoring local explanations about the significant role of the salmon farming industry in contributing to the red tide and multiple shocks to local livelihoods and environmental systems. Although efforts to provide new scientific information about environmental issues were made by different organizations in the community, with positive outcomes, such as increased awareness of the environmental damage caused by salmon farming, participants’ expectations regarding the social-ecological future of the Island were uncertain at best and often dystopian.

Although governance and institutions are crucial for better adaptive capacity in the face of social-ecological changes, the results show that the governance of the crisis is far from ideal (e.g., adaptive governance; Folke et al. 2005) in two ways. First, national governance strategies lack proactivity and planning capacity, poorly responding to the effects of the algal blooms on fisher’s income (e.g., a temporary subsidy), ignoring salmon farming concerns despite social movement demands, and constraining artisanal fisheries livelihoods with rigid institutions and legislation that favors industrial fishing and aquaculture. Although a few positive outcomes resulted from the community’s capacity to mobilize some networks, producing the audit and the Supreme Court decision regarding the negligent supervision of the salmon farming industry, these efforts were fulfilled by external institutions rather than the central government. Secondly, adaptive governance puts the role of social networks and social capital at its center (Adger 2003, Folke et al. 2005). However, what is striking in the governance of the Chiloé crisis is the breakdown of trust between organizations and groups within the same local community and between communities, as well as between decision-making institutions and higher levels of the political hierarchy, negatively impacting bridging and linking social capital. This negative effect on trust seems to have roots in the different construction of official explanations and knowledge of the causes of the crisis that were opposed to people’s narratives and later reinforced by the myopia of the national government. Similar to what Bunce et al. (2010a) refer to as “policy misfit,” if policy makers lack foresight regarding the complex multiple interacting causes of the social-ecological crisis, they will likely respond ineffectively to long-term environmental changes, increasing communities’ vulnerabilities.

The literature acknowledges diversification as a crucial strategy to mobilize adaptive capacity (Blythe et al. 2014, Finkbeiner 2015). However, participants indicate a high dependency on marine resources through artisanal fishing or the salmon farming industry, contributing to riskier and less diverse livelihoods. Although livelihood diversification and livelihood conversion emerged as two concepts to decrease Chiloé’s marine resource dependencies, the results showed that profound environmental uncertainties undermine livelihood opportunities in agriculture and tourism. Narratives of water scarcity and the presence of salmon farming as a flawed but necessary destiny are common, aligned again with peoples’ high perception of risk that can be traced back to their uncertain experiences and fears for Chiloé’s environmental future.

Finally, the results illustrate how, in Chiloé, the lack of access to public assets is a dimension present in various aspects of the crisis. Perceptions of the reasons for the social movement are anchored in this lack of public assets and basic services such as community health infrastructure, education, and road infrastructure, as well as perceptions of risk they experience regarding future livelihood opportunities. Mascareño et al. (2018) pointed this out in their analysis of the crisis: Chiloé is an unstable SES prone to sudden shifts due to a configuration of visible and hidden fragilities that have gone unaddressed for decades, such as centralization in decision making, problems of connectivity within the archipelago, and restricted access to and quality of social services. Although access to public goods can contribute to sustainable well-being (Cinner et al. 2018), the results suggest that in Chiloé, these unattended demands before, during, and after the crisis undermined the communities’ adaptive capacity.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent patterns across interview results have shown that trends, or chronic stressors (aquaculture, unattended historical demands with central government, and climate change), can collide with multiple shocks (e.g., algal blooms, stranding of shellfish, salmon dumping, a social movement), causing a crisis that is compounded by a perfect storm of knowledge uncertainty and social conflict. Thus, uncertainty about current and future environmental harm becomes an experience embedded in people’s perceptions, challenging adaptive capacity to its breaking point. Our analysis reveals that the mechanism of this rupture is rooted in irreconcilable views on what caused the crisis and the impact of the social movement itself. That irreconcilability acknowledges the fundamental role of knowledge uncertainty in disrupting or eroding adaptive capacity: this central knowledge uncertainty, because of multiple trends colliding with acute shocks, eroded all other components. This aspect has been acknowledged in the SES theory on adaptive capacity and resilience (Folke et al. 2003, Tam et al. 2021), yet it remains under-recognized in empirical research.

Although knowledge uncertainty has been under-studied, the environmental suffering literature is instructive in this sense. The work of Auyero and Swistun (2009) shows how decades of petrochemical pollution in the Argentine shantytown of Flammable affects inhabitants’ everyday experience through suffering related to toxic uncertainty. They also show how this uncertainty is socially produced by a labor of confusion reinforced by knowledge brokers such as doctors, state agents, media, and industrial interests. In the case of Chiloé’s crisis, the opposing narratives regarding the knowledge of its causes are also part of a ‘labor of confusion’ reinforced by the central government and official scientific agencies. As some authors have agreed in the same case study, controversial communications during a crisis can manipulate and confound knowledge, producing intentional doubt (Mascareño et al. 2018), or even further, aiming to depoliticize the movement (Herrera 2020). Similar to our findings, presenting the causes of the crisis as a natural phenomenon allows governmental and industrial actors to avoid responsibility for their contributions to the crisis, as illustrated by the scientific-political discourses in Chiloé. In such a scenario, where knowledge about the causes of environmental change and uncertainty about the future limited opportunities for livelihood diversification and adaptation, this also contributes to high institutional distrust. Ultimately, only better governance strategies, rebuilding trust, and forms of knowledge production, along with increased public participation, may lead the system away from imminent paralysis and toward the most viable paths for adaptation.

__________

^[1] Based on the criteria outlined above and recent scholarship on the “Mayo Chilote” (Mascareño et al. 2018, Delamaza et al. 2023), we will consider the event as a social movement.
^[2] According to the 2017 census.
^[3] In 2017, SERNAPESCA registered 86,056 licenses throughout the country for artisanal fisheries, 46,707 of which are in the Los Lagos region where Chiloe is located (SERNAPESCA 2024).
^[4] Interestingly, the claims of the movement were far from homogeneous; variations could be found in the different lists of claims among municipalities. Nevertheless, all of them were directed to the Chilean central government and included: a scientific investigation to analyze the causes of the marine environmental crisis and the role of salmon dumping in it, and to audit the authorities involved in permitting the salmon dumping. In addition, the movement requested a complete study of the current state of the salmon farming industry and its environmental impacts, in order to compensate the inhabitants for the industry’s pollution. A related request was to continually audit the salmon farming industry and create new regulations so that salmon farming can be more sustainable and avoid massive mortality. Finally, the lists of demands included claims from the artisanal fishing sector, such as monetary compensations and programs for livelihood diversification, freezing of their debts, the opening of the Artisanal Fishing Registry, and the repeal of the 2012 Fishing and Aquaculture law that favor Industrial fishing over artisanal fishing (Radio Universidad de Chile 2016).
^[5] Subsequent visits to Chiloé in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 did not change the findings here in any discernible way.
^[6] This research has the ethical approval from the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia (Certificate Number H18-00222), as a part of the Master’s Thesis of the principal investigator, and has been the primary and only use of the data as covered by this ethical license. Following Ethical procedures in place by the University of British Columbia, interviewees agreed voluntarily to participate in this research by a written consent form, which contained a detailed description of the research purpose and procedures, data collection, confidentiality, and subjects’ rights, as well as benefits and risks.
^[7] It is important to mention that the principal investigator (N.A.) is a native of Chiloé, born and raised in Castro city, which facilitated rapport and initial contacts with key stakeholders.
^[8] These systems are considered outstanding landscapes of aesthetic beauty, combining agricultural biodiversity and wildlife, resilient ecosystems, valuable Indigenous knowledge, and cultural heritage (FAO 2019).
^[9] For example, the widely known “Estallido social” in Chile in October 2018 was a violent social upheaval that left 20 dead and 500 victims of human rights violations by the police (Jiménez-Yañez 2020).

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