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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Environment
and development in coastal regions and in small islands |
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Evolution
of Village-based Marine Resource Management in Vanuatu between l993
and 2001
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Our data indicate a high level of approval by villagers of their MRM measures; in the 21 villages surveyed only five out of 40 MRM measures had lapsed between 1993 and 200l while 51 new MRM measures had been implemented. In only two villages were there fewer MRMs in 2001 than in 1993. One of those was one of the villages where there were marine tenure disputes. One way, already mentioned, of encouraging the resolution of CMT disputes is withholding outside MRM assistance from villages where such disputes are active. This is the policy of the Fisheries Department.
Reasons for Success
There have been many attempts to generate improved MRM in Pacific Island villages and few seem to have achieved such widespread success[14] as the turtle and trochus initiatives in Vanuatu (although Samoa offers another outstanding example (e.g. Fa'asili and Kelokolo, 1999).
Some of the factors that have influenced the growth in MRM in Vanuatu were already identified in the l993 survey (Johannes, l998a). Customary marine tenure provides the foundation upon which MRM is built. Strong leadership and village cohesion are important in determining how well MRM functions. Villagers can benefit greatly from outside assistance to help focus and refine MRM initiatives to fit contemporary circumstances.
These conclusions are also relevant to a variety of other Pacific Islands where customary marine tenure is found (e.g. World Bank, l999). Are there, in addition, any unusual forces at work in Vanuatu in connection with MRM?
The upsurge in village-based MRM in Vanuatu since l990 demonstrates clearly how outside assistance, properly targeted, can generate major benefits. Certain elements of this assistance are unusual and perhaps unique.
The demonstration of the value of trochus closures by the Vanuatu Fisheries Department was clearly the original catalytic influence on the growth of community based MRM - an influence that quickly motivated community experiments with other forms of MRM. (The Department's extension work continues to the degree that its limited budget allows. Trochus management education has been carried out and juvenile trochus have been planted in 25 villages around the country.) It has not been proven that trochus planting generally improves trochus populations any more than simple trochus ground closures would. However, the instigator of the program, Mr. Amos says that trochus planting enhances communities' support for and compliance with trochus closures.
This is due, he says, to the increased awareness associated with the training they get, along with their participation in re-stocking the reef with juvenile trochus and then in monitoring their stocks. Part of the increased commitment to trochus conservation seems also to be because the villagers were given something concrete (the juvenile trochus) and in return they feel more committed to regulating the resulting fishery. A strategy for further enhancing the feeling of community involvement in the trochus plantings is that the Fisheries Department actually borrows adult trochus from the community for breeding the stock they subsequently plant there.
We suspect that an important common element in the Department of Fisheries' and WSB's catalytic initiatives[15] in village-based MRM is that both focussed initially on a single important animal. Trochus are rural Vanuatu's most commercially valuable shallow water marine resource. Turtles are a highly esteemed food and in some areas have customary significance. They are thus both important and of particular interest to coastal villagers.
Once villagers saw the benefits of trochus management, it encouraged them to think about how they could better manage their other marine resources. It would probably have been harder to motivate villagers from the start to accept the more complex goal of improving MRM in general[16]. As described above, WSB and the Department of Fisheries are now heading in that direction, but only after having gained credibility through the turtle and trochus initiatives.
The effectiveness of enforcement of MRM regulations in Vanuatu varies with factors such as the strength of village leadership, fishing ground geography (i.e. ease of surveillance) and presence or absence of tenure disputes. The fact that these regulations are not always effectively enforced does not distinguish them from MRM in most, if not all other countries, developing or developed.
Education - Not Just for Villagers
Another lesson emerges from this study. Education is important in several ways. When national conservation regulations were explained to villagers and were perceived by them to coincide with village interests, they were often incorporated into village management. This greatly enhanced their observance according to many informants. Ignorance of these laws, and of the reasons for them, had previously been widespread in rural Vanuatu - as it was in the villages in five other Pacific Island countries surveyed recently by the World Bank (l999).
Effective enforcement of such regulations by central government agencies in developing countries such as Vanuatu is quite out of reach. In most cases these regulations must be enforced by village authorities or not at all (see also World Bank, l999). Village authorities will not enforce them if they are not informed of their existence, their purpose and their ultimate value to the community. In managing coastal marine resources villagers provide at little or no cost to the national government what it could not possibly afford to do itself. Even if it could, it would be extremely cost-ineffective (e.g. Johannes, l998b). This is why there is little effective, government-based nearshore fisheries management in Pacific Island countries.
Johannes (l990) argued that fisheries extension work that focuses on fisheries management (as distinct from fisheries development) needed much greater emphasis in Oceania. The present research reveals the benefits of this emphasis, along with the research of Johannes (l998), Fa'asili and Kelokolo (l999) and World Bank (l999). Yet the World Bank (1999) study of fishing communities in five Pacific Island countries in l998 revealed that only 40% of the 31 communities they surveyed had been visited by a government official to discuss coastal management issues during the previous decade, and that an average of only 25% of fisheries department budgets were for extension work (including both management and development components).
Villagers are not the only ones needing more education concerning rural MRM. National governments need to realise that nearshore subsistence fisheries in almost every Pacific island country are worth more than nearshore commercial fisheries (Dalzell et al, 1996). (The value of the subsistence catch was calculated by these authors as the price it would fetch if it were sold). In the early l990s according to these authors, subsistence fisheries in Vanuatu provided five times the catch of nearshore commercial fisheries and were worth almost l.5 times as much. If the foreign exchange cost of imports to support higher technology commercial fisheries were factored in, the benefit ratio of subsistence and commercial fishing would have increased further. (Johannes, l998a). On economic grounds, then, extension work in rural fishing communities, where subsistence fishing usually dominates the catch, deserves a larger proportion of fisheries funding than it usually gets. Commercial fisheries have often attracted more attention when island politicians and aid donors decide on funding priorities.
Commencing on December 10, 2001, the Land Tribunal Act was enacted in Vanuatu to provide " for a system based on custom to resolve disputes about customary land " and including " the waters within the outer edge of any reef adjacent to customary land ". This new legislation allows for the establishment of Village, Custom Sub Area, Custom Area and Island Land Tribunals to deal with all customary land disputes. Effectively, appeals of the Village Land Tribunal decisions can only go as far as the Island Land Tribunal, hence, under this new legislation, customary land disputes will be resolved through custom on the island where the dispute exists. Prior to the introduction of this legislation, most land disputes were appealed all the way to the Supreme Court in the Capital.
Many thanks to the unwavering support from all the helpful people at the Department of Fisheries, in particular Moses Amos, Director of Fisheries, William Naviti, Senior Resource Manager, Graham Nimoho, the Principal Fisheries Extension Officer, and Felix Ngyuen and John Mahit from the Research Section. Thanks also to Jenny White of the Foundation for Peoples of the South Pacific International and to Leah Nimoho of the Environment Unit. Also a big thanks to all of the to all of the Chiefs of the villages visited and to other informants who took time to contribute to this survey, particularly the cheerful Karl Plelo in Central Malekula and Dick Dickenson of the Cultural Centre who helped greatly in southern Malekula. This study was supported by Environment and Development in Coastal Regions and in Small Islands Unit - CSI, UNESCO.
