Geographies of the Sea: Negotiating Human–Fish Interactions in the Waterscapes of Colombia’s Pacific Coast

The realities of many coastal dwellers have been shaped by their interactions with fish and water along the world’s waterscapes. However, human and cultural geographers have largely overlooked how waterscapes influence coastal people’s behaviors and social interactions. Studies of geographies of the sea have acknowledged the importance of human–nonhuman interactions in the context of fluid ocean spaces and political economies. Critically engaging capitalist, industrialized perspectives of oceans, our article contributes to this literature to study how Afro-descendant small-scale fishers in the Gulf of Tribugá respond to intensifying neoliberal fishing regimes in Colombia’s Pacific coast. We do so by examining how fishers negotiate diverse representations of fish and how these influence their behaviors and practices over time and space. We bring the sea to the center of inquiry to investigate how the sociomaterial character of fish intersects with political, economic, and cultural forces and how they influence perceptions, access, and use of oceans. We argue that the scarcity induced by industrial fisheries overexploitation has changed people’s access to and control over fish and enabled biodiversity conservation discourses to marketize and transform fishing practices. This process has added value to fish through the creation of marine protected areas and the rebranding of fish in terms of traceability and “valued-added” sustainability. In this context, however, we highlight how fishers and their practices have endured through situated institutional practices despite being wrapped up in the complex power dynamics that have marginalized Afro-descendant people in Colombia since colonial times. Key Words: assemblage, Colombia, geographies of the sea, institutions, neoliberalism

The Prospects for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Vietnam: A Look at Three Payment Schemes

Global conservation discourses and practices increasingly rely on market-based solutions to fulfill the dual objective of forest conservation and economic development. Although varied, these interventions are premised on the assumption that natural resources are most effectively managed and preserved while benefiting livelihoods if the market-incentives of a liberalised economy are correctly in place. By examining three nationally supported payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes in Vietnam we show how insecure land tenure, high transaction costs and high opportunity costs can undermine the long-term benefits of PES programmes for local households and, hence, potentially threaten their livelihood viability. In many cases, the income from PES programmes does not reach the poor because of political and economic constraints. Local elite capture of PES benefits through the monopolization of access to forestland and existing state forestry management are identified as key problems. We argue that as PES schemes create a market for ecosystem services, such markets must be understood not simply as bald economic exchanges between ‘rational actors’ but rather as exchanges embedded in particular socio-political and historical contexts to support the sustainable use of forest resources and local livelihoods in Vietnam

First to third nature: The rise of capitalist conservation on Palawan Island, the Philippines

The social relations and agricultural lands that rural peoples in Southeast Asia hold in common are being commodified through the converging pressures of agrarian change, conservation and capitalist development. This paper examines how broader and local processes driving agrarian differentiation have been accelerated through the revaluing of people and nature in market terms to ostensibly finance conservation through development at the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park – the flagship protected area of Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on the notions of ‘first’ and ‘third nature’, I show how the pace and scale of agrarian change between rural peoples has gone ‘fast forward’ with the onset of resource partitioning, objectification, commodification and, ultimately, revaluing through translocal ‘capitalist conservation’, the rise of conservation as capitalist production. I examine how the national park's valuing as a ‘common’ World Heritage has drawn major private sector investments that objectify, commodify and rearticulate the value of nature as capital that finances and merges conservation and development according to the images and ideals of the modern Philippines. The conclusion asserts that while the processes of differentiation and capitalist conservation facilitate the revaluing of nature in market terms, the overall process remains recursive, partial and context dependent

Rooted in place? The coproduction of knowledge and space in agroforestry assemblages

In much of Southeast Asia, agroforestry and related forms of tree cropping have been vigorously promoted within community-based forest management (CBFM) to discourage extensive resource uses among upland peoples. Although critical scholars have scrutinized CBFM initiatives, how and why agroforestry has emerged as a concept, strategy, and practice in changing forest governance regimes remains underexplored. Integrating assemblage approaches and coproduction, we explore how certain environmental framings are stabilized within agroforestry projects to achieve outcomes as part of increasingly post-territorial forest management in the Philippines. We do so by focusing on how the Palawan Tropical Forestry Protection Programme (PTFPP, 1995–2002)—a prominent European Union–funded forest management project on Palawan Island—extensively promoted market-oriented agroforestry as a means to arrest forest degradation and provide cash income to indigenous uplanders. We describe how PTFPP livelihood projects aimed to reform indigenous peoples' values of forest resources by foregrounding tree planting as an economically and morally ideal practice and, in doing so, limit the range, mobility, and perceived impact of swidden (kaingin) by “rooting” agriculture in place. Building on the historical analysis of policy documents, we use ethnographic fieldwork among upland swiddeners in southern Palawan to explore the practice and outcome of the PTFPP as an incremental coproduction of varied knowledges and space brokered by project officials, customary leaders, and farmers themselves. We conclude by showing how seemingly apolitical tree-based interventions could produce conservation objectives, such as the sedenterization of upland famers, in the absence of strict territorial boundaries

The role of 'hybrid' NGOs in the conservation and development of Palawan Island, the Philippines

The rapid rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines has reflected a regional trend toward the “democratization” of conservation and development on behalf of the rural poor when the state falls short. This article examines how this trend has manifested itself among the indigenous peoples of Palawan Island and how, despite best intentions, project delivery by “hybrid” NGOs—changing organizational forms with multiple objectives and functions—has often yielded unsustainable and culturally damaging outcomes. We draw on ethnographic research among the Tagbanua and Batak peoples to examine recent claims of broad NGO success in achieving community empowerment and forest conservation on Palawan. We support our argument by examining case studies in which NGOs and state failures to properly engage traditional livelihoods have reinforced outsider control over indigenous needs and aspirations

People, power and timber: The politics of community-based forest management

The potential of devolved conservation to empower people, reduce poverty and protect forest resources has yet to be realized in much of the developing world. This is particularly evident in the Philippines where the central state paradoxically recentralizes political power through devolution at the policy, program and project level in forest management. We investigate how centralized state power emanates through devolved networks to affect the success of local timber utilization involving community-based forest management (CBFM) on Mindanao Island, the southern Philippines. By examining broader shifts from centralized to devolved forest management, results suggest that centralized political power continues to control and adversely affect local uses of timber through CBFM. We discuss how in the process of state authorities recentralizing devolved rights and responsibility over timber management, community-based logging operations were threatened but sustained by members relying on community- based structures and their own capabilities. The conclusion asserts that broader state processes of devolving power over timber management remains constrained by political motives and interests and so largely fails to fulfill the objectives of community-based forest management

Indigenous peoples and migrants: Social categories, rights, and policies for protected areas in the Philippine uplands

This article identifies four models of park management that apply where indigenous people mix with migrant settlers in developing countries: (a) coercive conservation; (b) community-based conservation; (c) ancestral domain; and (d) European-style landscape park. Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in Palawan Island, the Philippines, has evolved through all four types. While legal recognition of indigenous peoples' land rights has improved their relative position vis-agrave-vis their migrant neighbors, it has not equalized their lack of access to political and economic resources. This deficit prevents them from capturing full benefits from the forest, and consequently undermines their capacity and incentive to conserve forest resources. We argue that indigenous peoples' property rights and access to assets must be sufficiently secure for them to actively participate in park management and share in its benefits. This leads to the conclusion that the most effective and just form of park management is a blend of community-based conservation, ancestral domain, and landscape park. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

How Biodiversity Conservation Policy Accelerates Agrarian Differentiation: The Account of an Upland Village in Vietnam

This paper shows how the implementation of Vietnam's recent biodiversity conservation policy in Ba Vi National Park has increased the economic value of nature, created sustained conflict, and exacerbated agrarian differentiation in an upland village in northern Vietnam. Increased global and national interest in biodiversity conservation has intersected with markets for ecosystem services that attempt to commoditise biodiversity resources in Ba Vi National Park and reconfigure conservation as market-based development. Efforts to marketise conservation have simultaneously increased the financial value of forestland and drawn new capital investments. In Ba Vi, local elites have captured these new forms of wealth through their connections to political parties, reinforcing the already unequal distributions of wealth and power. Coupled with political power, rising land value has also allowed local elites to become landlords, with the capacity to further dispossess other villagers. The resulting skewed access to natural resources has widened the gap between poor and wealthy villagers, and contributes to their over-exploitation of forests within the Park through informal agricultural expansion. The ensuing local conflicts have also negatively affected livelihoods and biodiversity resources.Fieldwork for this study was partly supported by the Transversal Package Project (TPP) 'Knowledge, Power, Politics' of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South

Fish, trade and food security: moving beyond 'availability' discourse in marine conservation

The goal of food security increasingly serves as an objective and justification for marine conservation in the global south. In the marine conservation literature this potential link is seldom based upon detailed analysis of the socioeconomic pathways between fish and food security, is often based on limited assumptions about increasing the availability of fish stocks, and downplays the role of trade. Yet, the relationship between fish and food security is multi-faceted and complex, with various local contextual factors that mediate between fish and food security. We use data from interviews and food security assessment methods to examine the relationship between fish and food security among fishing households in San Vicente, Palawan province, Philippines. We highlight the local role of income and trade, emphasising the sale of fish to purchase food not easily accessible for fishers, particularly staples. In particular, we show that because rice is the primary staple of food security for these households, fish must be traded with the intent of buying rice. Trade is therefore central to household food security. We argue that the relationship between fish and food security must be considered in greater depth if marine conservation is to engage with food security as an objective