SASAP: Well-Being and Alaska Salmon Systems

Human well-being has been widely promoted as an important dimension of sustainability, and is increasingly gaining application in fisheries. At the same time, efforts to measure well-being and incorporate these dimensions into resource governance and decision-making remains hamstrung by availability of data and broad assumptions about important components of quality of life and well-being. This state of the knowledge synthesis project is driven by the overarching goal of identifying and applying well-being concepts to improve the social sustainability and management of Alaska salmon systems. We address the following questions: 1) How do salmon-dependent individuals and communities define well-being, and how do salmon-human connections contribute to various forms of well-being? 2) What dimensions of human well-being are currently understudied in the context of Alaska salmon systems? 3) How have human well-being concepts been incorporated into fishery management decision-making processes? and 4) What information gaps currently exist? Workgroup members include Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, practitioners, and knowledge bearers from diverse communities across Alaska, as well as several national and international experts representing a range of disciplines, organizations, and governmental bodies. Guided by the above questions, we engage in a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue with the aim of understanding interdependencies between sociocultural and ecological systems, salmon-human connections and contributions to well-being in Alaska, and relationships between management and well-being. We pay special attention to well-being concepts inclusive of Indigenous people’s priorities and perspectives.