/library/oar/handle/123456789/130245 2026-06-14T00:58:22Z 2026-06-14T00:58:22Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/144590 2026-03-04T13:34:46Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The sustainability of seaweed aquaculture for blue growth and climate change adaptation in small island developing states : the case of Belize Abstract: This doctoral thesis investigated the sustainability of seaweed aquaculture in Belize, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS). While SIDS are inherently subjected to the extreme environmental and socioeconomic impacts of climate change, limited research has examined climate adaptation strategies within the context of sustainable livelihoods in seaweed farming. This study explores how seaweed farming contributes to sustainable livelihoods by integrating community-based (CbA) and ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) strategies framed through the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF). The research is situated within the broader context of Blue Transformation and Blue Economy, addressing the connections between livelihoods, environmental management, and national development objectives aligned with global sustainability agendas such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A triangulated mixed-methods approach was employed, combining qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative component included focus group discussions using the Community-based Risk Screening Tool-Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL) toolkit, semi-structured interview household surveys, elite stakeholder interviews, and policy analysis using the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal (PESTEL) tool. The quantitative component included descriptive statistics, Chi-square tests, cross-tabulation, and multi-linear regressions models to examine the relationship between livelihood capitals and seaweed production. This methodological integration provided a comprehensive understanding of both community-level and policy-level factors impacting the sustainability of seaweed farming livelihoods. The findings reveal that seaweed farming in Belize represents a viable and environmentally sustainable livelihood, yet it faces challenges from both climatic and non-climatic factors. While ocean temperature rises and storms impact farm productivity, more persistent issues such as limited financial resources, inadequate infrastructure, and weak institutional support constrain the sector’s long-term sustainability. The results show that EbA and CbA approaches positivity impact production outcomes, while farm size, gender, and value-adding activities display complex associations with harvest levels. Qualitative findings highlight the importance of traditional knowledge, collective action, and environmental stewardship in sustaining seaweed mariculture practices. The integration of these findings demonstrates coherence between household livelihood strategies, local community initiatives, and institutional frameworks. The research identifies the need for coordinated governance, improved policy coherence, and greater technical and financial investment to strengthen seaweed aquaculture as part of Belize’s Blue Economy strategy. This thesis makes three key contributions. First, it provides new empirical evidence linking SLF with community and ecosystem-based approaches in the context of SIDS. Second, it broadens the conceptual scope of sustainable livelihoods by incorporating ecological and cultural dimensions, offering a transferable framework for analyzing marine-based livelihoods. Third, it contributes to policy and practice by identifying specific areas for targeted investment, technical training, and inclusive governance to enhance the long-term sustainability of seaweed farming. The study concludes that seaweed aquaculture in Belize offers a sustainable and socially inclusive pathway for economic diversification and climate-aware development. Its continued success depends on integrating local practices with coherent policy frameworks that empower small-scale producers and align with national and international blue growth priorities. Future research should expand upon this tripartite hazard screening analysis to explore the interactions between risks, livelihoods, ecosystems, and governance across SIDS and beyond. Description: Ph.D.(Melit.)

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/144589 2026-03-04T13:31:11Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Explorations of social suffering and violence in a bipartisan political context : the case of Jamaica Abstract: Social suffering and urban violence are significant factors for Kingston’s urban poor communities. This study explores these concepts within Jamaica’s bipartisan political environment. The foundation of this project is the view that Jamaica’s colonial past has concretised a two-party political system leading to political tribalism and violence. Engaging the lived realities of 24 Jamaicans, the study aims to improve the complicated reality of social suffering and violence in urban inner-city communities while navigating political power. This investigation delves deeply into the socio-historical consequences of two-party politics and tribalism for the people who live in these places. This study takes an interpretive phenomenological analytical approach. The study engaged in-depth semi-structured and key informant interviews as the primary methods of data collection. Naturalistic observations were engaged as a complementary tool to best engage the methods social actors use to make meaning in their daily realities. The project focuses on two communities aligned to the two dominant political parties in Jamaica: the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party. The study offers a novel conceptual position that political communities in Jamaica operate as landed islands, creating endemic government, economic, and social systems. The study examines the relational and mitigation strategies that the urban poor employ to respond to endemic systems. The study notes social actors use biomedical and sensory parameters to offer a robust description of poverty. Finally, the study centers social suffering as a prerequisite of these spaces – where social actors embrace suffering as a condition of landed islands. Description: Ph.D.(Melit.)

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/144339 2026-02-26T13:51:18Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Investigating discourses on heroin use and users in a small island developing state (SIDS) : the case of Seychelles Abstract: As a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) with the highest GDP per capita in Africa, Seychelles is significantly affected by the heroin pandemic, experiencing the highest rate of heroin use per capita globally. Despite this, little is known about the complex realities of heroin practices in Seychelles, as no qualitative sociological study has been conducted locally. Existing literature, largely Western-focused, inadequately addresses how heroin use is produced, practised, and governed in island and small states contexts, limiting informed drug policy debates. I adopt a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to examine how problematic heroin use and users are constructed, promoted, and sustained within Seychelles’ socio-cultural and political milieu. Data were collected from three sources: media texts to analyse representations of heroin and users; semi-structured interviews with six former problematic heroin users, to capture lived experiences and discursive constructions; and interviews with seven elite and expert stakeholders, to explore policy and practice perspectives. Five dominant discourses – medical, resource scarcity, political, stigmatising, and the ‘wake up and be normal’ discourse- shape intervention approaches, public understanding, and user identities. These overlapping discourses construct heroin users as deviant, ill, criminal, or morally failed, justifying practices of surveillance, abstinence-based treatment, and exclusion. The study reveals how Seychelles’ religious, cultural, and socio-political dynamics reinforce stigma and moral judgement as tools of power. Notably, no distinction is made between heroin use and problematic use; all heroin consumption is deemed dangerous and addictive. This thesis advances sociological insights into drug use in island settings, challenges prevailing medicalised and criminalised narratives, and advocates for contextually relevant, inclusive strategies that address stigma and acknowledge the political aspects of heroin and other illegal drug consumption. Description: Ph.D.(Melit.)

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/141261 2025-11-13T11:16:10Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Blue carbon markets in small island developing states : community participation in the case of Seychelles Abstract: Climate change and its forecasted impacts on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been documented in the literature extensively, and climate change adaptation has been identified by mainstream scholars as a key policy response. However, relatively little is known about how SIDS implement climate change adaptation initiatives on the ground, and much less is known about how local communities are integrated in the decision-making policy processes around these initiatives. The challenges in this space are many, and revolve around a lack of research capacity, a lack of inclusion of all stakeholders, a dearth of robust data as well as a vague policy directive on how to operationalise adaptive capacity knowledge at the community level. Given these challenges, SIDS have increasingly looked towards their territorial ocean space as a way of re-framing their future development pathways in recent years. Termed as the Blue Economy (BE) model, some SIDS have started to re-consider the true value of their marine ecosystems via this more formalised framework, especially given the importance of preserving and conserving their blue carbon stock (mangroves, salt water marshes and seagrass meadows) to prevent further climate change. Within this context, the Republic of Seychelles hosts some of the largest seagrass meadows in the Western Indian Ocean. Therefore, blue carbon markets, and specifically the participation of local communities within such mechanisms, requires much further attention as a potential mitigative measure for climate change adaptation to succeed. This research traces the role of climate change adaptation within SIDS’ development agendas, the rise of the Blue Economy model, and the potential for blue carbon offset markets therein as a potential for further adaptative measure in the SIDS, through the lens of the Republic of Seychelles’ Blue Economy model. The role of community participation in blue carbon markets, notably, seagrass habitats and meadows, is considered in depth. The study involved the conducting of a systematic literature review to identify research gaps. The use of a discrete choice model was also proposed as a means to assess the community’s willingness to participate in a blue carbon offset project in Seychelles. It is believed that this is the first time the multinomial logit model (MNL) in assessing adaptive capacity through seagrass carbon offset markets in Seychelles has ever been applied. This research study collected primary data via an exploratory research design as there was very little data in existence as discovered by the researcher. The three main data collection methods employed the use of the CRisTAL participatory approach for community mapping focus groups, elite interviews among key stakeholders in government, academia and civil society, and a household questionnaire that was randomly disseminated within the coastal communities on the three main islands of Seychelles. Further, the study also sought to test the hypothesis of whether climate conscious individuals in Seychelles would participate in a seagrass offset market due to societal expectations, altruism and economic benefits. The researchers’ choice of methods was intended as an integration, one which would sequentially structure and build a comprehensive understanding of the research context. The elite interviews were conducted to glean high-level insights and these interviews informed the development of the household surveys and community focus groups by highlighting priority areas within the communities. The focus groups, in turn, which saw the use of the CRiSTAL mapping technique, allowed for a participatory exploration of ground roots issues, identifying lived experiences and broader themes that were especially relevant to the Seychelles context. Methodologically, this progression enabled the refinement of key concepts and the methods built on one another to generate a layered understanding of both the institutional and community-level dynamics that affected the Seychelles in the case of blue carbon offset markets. This integrated process ensured that each method contributed unique data while also serving to shape the subsequent data collection stages, thus reinforcing the coherence of the overall research design. In all, the researcher conducted four (4) community mapping focus groups, six (6) elite stakeholder interviews and completed the collection of two hundred and twenty-five (225) household surveys. While the sample size is acknowledged to be indicative. the data set was deemed robust enough for analysis and discussion by the researcher. This integrative approach enabled the study to advance a central argument: that the long-term feasibility of seagrass conservation in the Seychelles towards a blue carbon market is contingent not only on ecological priorities or top-down governance arrangements, but also very much dependent on a grounded, real-world understanding of how local communities perceive and interact with coastal ecosystems under conditions of climactic changes and institutional pressures. The objectives of the research revolved around identifying and assessing the advantages, disadvantages and barriers to community participation in blue carbon market measures that support climate change adaptation, in the context of the SIDS of Seychelles. In doing so, it helped to extend our theoretical understanding of climate change adaptation in the context of coastal communities of SIDS, and explored the role of community involvement in the uptake of local economic development mechanisms linked to the concept of the blue economy. The study contributed to the small but growing field of research focusing on the development of effective blue carbon markets in Small Island States, but will more importantly assess the importance of community participation in determining the success of these markets. The findings from this study shows that in general, it supported the majority of the findings in the mainstream literature but also revealed key new insights for the consideration of scholars in this field. It was found, for instance, that while most climate-conscious respondents would be willing to participate in a seagrass blue carbon offset market for social and economic reasons, many were not willing to participate financially for altruistic reasons on a voluntary basis presently. Furthermore, and perhaps more pertinently, many felt the introduction of blue carbon offset markets in Seychelles would not alleviate the climate crisis. Relevantly, the study also lent weight to the ‘people-policy’ gap that most scholars argue exists in climate adaptation literature. In doing so, the findings also emphasised the need to engage with coastal communities and stakeholders in a more meaningful manner. At the time of writing, it is also believed that such a study is rare in other SIDS and it is the first ever study conducted in Seychelles that sought to understand households’ willingness to pay for carbon offsetting in a seagrass blue carbon market. As Seychelles begins to work on the development of the country’s first Blue Carbon Policy, this research study makes a valuable first pass contribution for policy makers in Seychelles to understand the true perceptions of the community around the offset market concept and seek to implement the necessary policy levers in order to generate meaningful interactions with these stakeholders. Description: Ph.D.(Melit.)

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z