Browsing by Subject "Common-pool resource management"

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    INDIGENOUS MARINE TENURE IN A COMMON-POOL FRAMEWORK: A PHILIPPINE CASE STUDY
    (2004) Calcari, Meaghan E
    Indigenous peoples have lived on and from their lands for many generations in ways that have allowed the natural resources to remain relatively intact. Concurrent with an increase in world-wide designation of protected areas, indigenous people are actively securing traditional rights to their resources. At the same time, conservation practitioners are employing community engagement as the essential conservation strategy to conserve biodiversity and counteract social and environmental injustices of the past. The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, with indigenous people comprising 15.62% of its 12 million citizens. During the Philippines’ 1991 decentralization, the national government implemented progressive environmental and social laws that encouraged recognition of indigenous people’s rights. The Philippine Tagbanua of Coron Island are a traditional, seafaring people who have experienced decentralization’s benefits—the Tagbanua were the first indigenous group to legally control their ancestral waters under new legislation. The Tagbanua are thus an ideal case study on the ability of indigenous people to manage their common-pool resources (CPR). According to Elinor Ostrom’s theory on CPR management, certain sociocultural and political institutions lend themselves to more sustainable forms of resource management. Through quantitative data and policy analysis, I will assess the Tagbanua’s common-pool resource management regime in the context of Ostrom’s framework. I will highlight cultural structures that make the Tagbanua candidates for sustainable resource management and illuminate challenges the Tagbanua face—specifically clear resource boundaries, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution, and nested enterprises— in sustaining their marine resources.
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    Towards Sustainable Harvest of Sideneck River Turtles (Podocnemis spp.) in the Middle Orinoco, Venezuela
    (2010) Penaloza, Claudia

    Despite 21 years of protection, sideneck river-turtles (Podocnemis expansa, P. unifilis and P. vogli, arrau, terecay and galápago, respectively), an important food resource for riverine communities (ribereños) in the Middle Orinoco, have not recovered. To determine the most effective conservation alternative for recovery, we conducted semi-structured interviews of ribereños and determined their attitudes towards turtle conservation; we collected discarded turtle remains in riverine communities to estimate the level of turtle harvest; and constructed a population model to study the effect of reduced survival and future extraction on arrau turtle population growth. We found that ribereños blame continued commercial extraction for the lack of turtle population recovery. Ribereños have a desire to participate actively in conservation and, despite feeling alienated by governmental officials charged with protecting turtles, prefer to be included in conservation efforts. However, ribereños also fear retaliation from turtle poachers. We found widespread turtle harvest along the Middle Orinoco centered on juvenile arrau turtles, and adult female terecay and galápago turtles. In our population model, reducing harvest causes an increase in population growth. A 10% increase in survival causes rapid exponential growth in arrau turtles. The population continues to grow in over 70% of projected scenarios with limited harvest from a recovered stock. Due to the widespread distribution of turtles and their harvest, we recommend increasing ribereño participation in conservation activities, closing outsider (non-ribereño) access to the resource, increasing enforcement against illegal commercial harvest, instating possession limits for subsistence harvest, and promoting localized captive breeding of faster maturing terecay and galápago turtles to satisfy desire for turtle consumption.