The role of taboos in conserving coastal resources in Madagascar

This paper examines the role of taboos in limiting the exploitation of marine and coastal resources in Madagascar. I surveyed 13 communities within and adjacent to all five of Madagascar’s national marine parks. The presence of food and/or species taboos and gear restrictions is widespread, with sacred areas in three national marine parks. However, only one sacred area restricted fishing. Although customary management in the Pacific is often implemented adaptively to manipulate resources, in Madagascar, taboos are highly inflexible and some communities have resisted attempts to amalgamate them with contemporary conservation methods

Do market and trust contexts spillover into public goods contributions? Evidence from experimental games in Papua New Guinea

The provision of public goods, such as voluntary enforcement efforts, can be critical to the management of natural resources. However, the degree to which context can influence people's contributions to the public good is poorly understood. Here, we used sequential games in a 'lab in the field' experimental setting with a fishing community in Papua New Guinea to explore whether behavior in two particular contexts-market and trust-spill over public goods' contributions. Behavioral spillovers occur when behavior in one context influences-or is transferred to-behavior in another context. Our results indicate that there is spillover, but surprisingly this occurs from specific roles assumed within the context rather than the broader context itself. The existence of behavioral spillovers into public goods can render conservation initiatives that rely on contributions ineffective, or even damaging if they crowd out intrinsic behavior. Understanding the potential biases different context-e.g. markets created by market-based instruments or trust relied upon by community-based mechanism-can create, is necessary for the implementation of effective and efficient conservation initiatives

Moving climate change beyond the tragedy of the commons

 This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and HealthAustralian Research CouncilPew Charitable TrustPaul M. Angell Family Foundatio

Environmental justice in coastal systems: perspectives from communities confronting change

Life in the Pacific is characterised by interconnected, fast and slow socio-ecological change. These changes inevitably involve navigating questions of justice, as they shift who benefits from, owns, and governs resources, and whose claims and rights are recognized. Thus, greater understanding of perceptions of environmental justice within communities will be crucial to support fair adaptation. We contend that an environmental justice approach offers a theoretical foundation to help illuminate key concerns and trade-offs as communities navigate global change. Here, we apply an empirical environmental justice lens to the use and customary management of coastal resources in Papua New Guinea. Through two case studies, we examine perceptions of distributional, procedural and recognitional justice. We find similarities and differences. There were common concerns about the injustice of unequal fishing pressure and destructive methods, but in one case, concerns about people’s material needs overrode concerns about non-compliance and unequal costs. In the other case, deliberative decision-making served as a platform for not only negotiating and re-defining the distribution of costs and benefits, but also airing grievances, thereby strengthening recognition of different people’s values and concerns. In addition, we find that as coastal developing communities face increasing social and environmental changes, the procedures for governing resources and thus the means to make fair decisions about distribution, is inextricably connected to recognitional aspects of justice, such as respect, that can confer or undermine legitimacy. The heterogeneity of justice criteria in our cases emphasizes the need to elicit and understand plural justice perceptions in different contexts

Advancing procedural justice in conservation

Just participation in conservation decision-making is a moral imperative and critical to achieving social and ecological goals. However, understanding of what constitutes a just decision-making process in conservation remains limited. Integrating key literature from environmental justice, psychology of justice, and participatory conservation, we identify 11 procedural justice criteria, many of which have been overlooked in conservation literature. We develop a framework to help promote procedural justice in conservation decision-making which organizes the criteria into three key domains (Process properties, Agency of participants, Interpersonal treatment), which are underpinned by the justice dimension of recognition. We highlight seven policy levers that can be used to enhance procedural justice (e.g., scalar and contextual fit, conflict resolution, facilitation). However, advancing just decision-making using this framework requires addressing a number of key challenges, in particular those related to broader structural power inequalities, and elucidating and accounting for plural and situated conceptions of procedural justice. We outline a number of pathways to overcome these challenges, including promoting knowledge coproduction and self-reflexivity

Levels and drivers of fishers' compliance with marine protected areas

Effective conservation depends largely on people's compliance with regulations. We investigate compliance through the lens of fishers' compliance with marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs are widely used tools for marine conservation and fisheries management. Studies show that compliance alone is a strong predictor of fish biomass within MPAs. Hence, fishers' compliance is critical for MPA effectiveness. However, there are few empirical studies showing what factors influence fishers' compliance with MPAs. Without such information, conservation planners and managers have limited opportunities to provide effective interventions. By studying 12 MPAs in a developing country (Costa Rica), we demonstrate the role that different variables have on fishers' compliance with MPAs. Particularly, we found that compliance levels perceived by resource users were higher in MPAs (1) with multiple livelihoods, (2) where government efforts against illegal fishing were effective, (3) where fishing was allowed but regulated, (4) where people were more involved in decisions, and (5) that were smaller. We also provide a novel and practical measure of compliance: a compound variable formed by the number illegal fishers and their illegal fishing effort. Our study underlines the centrality of people’s behavior in nature conservation and the importance of grounding decision making on the social and institutional realities of each location

Markets and the crowding out of conservation-relevant behavior

Markets are increasingly being incorporated into many aspects of daily life and are becoming an important part of the conservation solution space. Although market-based solutions to environmental problems can result in improvements to conservation, a body of social science research highlights how markets may also have unforeseen consequences by crowding out or displacing 3 key types of behaviors potentially relevant to conservation, including people's willingness to engage in collective action and civic duty; tolerance for inflicting harm on others (third-party externalities); and desire for equity. Better understanding of the contexts and mechanisms through which this crowding out occurs and whether specific market-based instruments are more prone to different types of crowding out will be crucial to developing novel conservation initiatives that can reduce or prevent crowding out

Participation in devolved commons management: multiscale socioeconomic factors related to individuals' participation in community-based management of marine protected areas in Indonesia

Management of common-pool natural resources is commonly implemented under institutional models promoting devolved decision-making, such as co-management and community-based management. Although participation of local people is critical to the success of devolved commons management, few studies have empirically investigated how individuals' participation is related to socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales. Here, we evaluated how individual- and community-scale factors were related to levels of individual participation in management of community-based marine protected areas in Indonesia. In addressing this aim, we drew on multiple bodies of literature on human behaviour from economics and social science, including the social-ecological systems framework from the literature on common-pool resources, the theory of planned behaviour from social psychology, and public goods games from behavioural economics. We found three key factors related to level of participation of local people: subjective norms, structural elements of social capital, and nested institutions. There was also suggestive evidence that participation was related to people's cooperative behavioural disposition, which we elicited using a public goods game. These results point to the importance of considering socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales when examining individual behaviour. Further, our study highlights the need to consider multiscale mechanisms other than those designed to appeal to self interested concerns, such as regulations and material incentives, which are typically employed in devolved commons management to encourage participation. Increased understanding of the factors related to participation could facilitate better targeting of investments aimed at encouraging cooperative management

Disparities in the impacts of co-management on fishers’ livelihoods

Natural resources are widely managed through collaborative governance arrangements (e.g., co-management) which often result in the uneven distribution of costs and benefits among fishers. Discrepancies in how a fisher is impacted by co-management relative to other fishers or others in the community (i.e., disparity) can negatively affect fishers’ wellbeing, their support for management, and subsequently, ecological outcomes. Yet, disparities in the distribution of social impacts from co-management have rarely been assessed. We address this gap by examining disparities (losses and gains) in perceived livelihood impacts from co-management. Losses (or gains) occur when a fisher experiences a more negative (or positive) impact on their livelihood relative to other fishers or others in the community. We used data from interviews with 1191 fishers associated with 48 coral reef co-management arrangements across Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea to examine how socioeconomic and institutional characteristics were associated with losses and gains from co-management. Overall, we found that more fishers perceived equality than disparities in the distribution of co-management impacts. Of those that perceived disparities, more fishers perceived losses than gains. We also found that disparities could be predicted by a range of socioeconomic characteristics, including distance to markets and wealth, and institutional characteristics of the co-management regime, such as gear, access, and area restrictions. This study provides insights on potential entry points that could be used by managers and policy-makers to promote equitable co-management of small-scale fisheries, such as the reduction of losses by increasing participation in decision-making processes, fostering conflict resolution mechanisms, prioritizing gear restrictions over area restrictions, and reducing poverty

An experimental look at trust, bargaining, and public goods in fishing communities

Pro-social behavior is crucial to the sustainable governance of common-pool resources such as fisheries. Here, we investigate how key socioeconomic characteristics influence fishers’ pro-social and bargaining behavior in three types of experimental economic games (public goods, trust, and trade) conducted in fishing associations in Chile. Our games revealed high levels of cooperation in the public goods game, a high degree of trust, and that sellers rather than buyers had more bargaining power, yet these results were strongly influenced by participants’ socioeconomic characteristics. Specifically, gender, having a secondary income source, age, and being the main income provider for the household all had a relationship to multiple game outcomes. Our results highlight that engagement in pro-social behaviors such as trust and cooperation can be influenced by people’s socioeconomic context