Crafting the success and failure of decentralized marine management

Abstract

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the design and revision of a decentralized marine management scheme implemented on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia named Plan de Gestion de l’Espace Maritime (PGEM). Drawing on an analysis of over 50 consultative workshops and meetings, held from 2018 to 2021 during the PGEM revision, we document the materials, discourses, and practices local stakeholders (e.g., fishers, cultural and environmental activists, government staff, and scientists) combine to build their interpretations of PGEM success or failure. We examine the diversity of domains these interpretations draw from (ecology, marine livelihoods, culture, religion, and politics) and how they are put into practice in people’s engagement with—or resistance to—the local marine management and governance design. Our results highlight how the controversies around the revision of Moorea’s PGEM overflowed the boundaries of ecology as construed by scientific experts. Stakeholders interpreted “marine resource management” as something well beyond just “marine resources” to include politics, identity, Polynesian cosmology, and livelihoods. Our findings provide generalizable patterns for understanding how natural-resource management policies are received and repurposed by local actors.

A sea of connections: Reflections on connectivity from/in Oceania

“…On Moorea, French Polynesia, community-based fisheries management endeavors have given momentum to the definition, then revision, of the contested local marine spatial management plan ( Plan de Gestion de l’Espace Maritime or PGEM). As argued by Wencélius et al ( 2022 ), one of the contentious points was the disconnection this PGEM implied between marine and terrestrial issues, thus perpetuating the land-sea divide inherited from French colonial rule, instead of reinvigorating Polynesian understandings of the land-sea continuum and associated forms of management. These are embedded in the term rāhui , which refers to temporary bans on specific species or spaces.…”

“…A focus on ‘friction’ allows for the study of heterogeneous, cross-cultural, partly long-distance encounters, and of “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference” that lead to “new arrangements of culture and power,” which can be either “compromising or empowering” (Tsing 2005 : 4, 6). This concept calls for specific attention to be paid to interactions and negotiations between the various stakeholders of South Pacific fisheries—for example, fishers, scuba divers, and surfers in Breckwoldt et al ( 2022a ), or the various individuals and organizations involved in the revision of Moorea’s local marine spatial management plan in Wencélius et al ( 2022 )—and to the potential culture and power reconfigurations they produce, intentionally or otherwise. This concept also sheds light on translation mechanisms of international statuses, norms and regulations at the local level (e.g., of ‘conservation’ in a village of Vanuatu in Pascht 2022 ), as well as of customary norms in policy frameworks (e.g., of unwritten iTaukei rules in better policy for sea turtle governance in Fiji in Kitolelei et al 2022 ), and of what these processes produce (e.g., the emergence of a national community-based fisheries management program in Vanuatu in Steenbergen et al 2022 ).…”

Moorea lagoon fishers’ mental maps: An exploratory analysis of Polynesian spatial knowledge

“…Nearly 20 years after its introduction, the PGEM of Moorea holds a mixed record (Bambridge et al., 2019; Calandra et al., 2022; Gaspar & Bambridge, 2008). From a human perspective, the PGEM has led to governance and social inequity issues as lagoon fishers do not support the zonings and regulations (Wencélius et al., 2022). This failure can be attributed to the combination of two main factors.…”