Browsing by Subject "Marine protected areas"

Large-scale Marine Protected Areas (LSMPAs) have recently and rapidly proliferated as a tool in global conservation governance, despite growing concerns for the implications for social justice and equity. This dissertation contributes to the emergent scholarship on the “human dimensions” of LSMPAs through a qualitative, multi-sited ethnography of the process of establishing two LSMPAs in Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), focusing on how politics and power affect outcomes for equity in marine conservation practice. It engages with the anthropological literature on conservation, using the framework of political ontology to explore the following three, thematic research questions:

1) Collapsing the Nature/Culture Divide: What are the “human dimensions” of large-scale marine conservation in sites characterized as “remote” and “pristine”?

2) Identifying Multi-natures in LSMPA Establishment: What are the effects of LSMPAs that purport to conserve remote and pristine spaces on indigenous ontologies of marine territory in Rapa Nui?

3) Multi-culturalism in LSMPA Establishment: How do the power relations and the politics of authority and recognition within participatory LSMPA establishment processes affect social justice outcomes for the indigenous Rapanui people?

Overall, this dissertation engages with anthropological theories of conservation and the emergent field of political ontology to provide an account of the human dimensions of LSMPAs, with a focus on how ontological politics and power relations affect indigenous participation in establishment processes. The dissertation is divided into three chapters, which are introduced with short, ethnographic vignettes that root this data within its ethnographic context and use storytelling to further develop the theoretical contributions of each chapter through the words and perspectives of the individuals who contributed to this ethnography. This dissertation contributes to anthropological analyses of conservation practice through an ethnographic account of the ontological dimensions of environmental conflict. It contributes to the burgeoning literature on the human dimensions of LSMPAs through an empirical engagement with participatory practice in LSMPA establishment processes.

As an important form of conservation programming, marine protected areas (MPAs) are now positioned as a key global strategy to protect and conserve marine biodiversity. This context has resulted in a rapid increase in the number and geographic extent of MPAs worldwide. While the benefits derived from MPA establishment are often optimistically framed as beneficial for both marine biodiversity and human wellbeing, this assumption is challenged for several reasons, including the fact that current science and practice frequently fail to account for the full impact of MPAs on human wellbeing. Current science and practice remain focused on a few easily quantifiable indicators in the material dimension. This context poses a danger that the context specific, place based aspects of wellbeing, such as social relations and connections to the marine environment, will not be examined, nor reported in evaluation and decision-making processes related to MPAs. It also reflects a growing need for improved in-depth studies on what wellbeing does and does not mean for particular people, in particular places, to better reflect the diversity in social and cultural constructions of human wellbeing (White 2016).

This dissertation contributes to growing social science scholarship on MPAs and human wellbeing by employing a qualitative, case study design to examine how one’s relational wellbeing can be transformed and challenged by an MPA. It does this by focusing on select small-scale fishing communities living in Mnazi Bay-Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park (MBREMP), located in southern Tanzania. Data collection occurred over 2019-2020 and primarily included 140 semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed, translated, and qualitatively coded for analysis. To explore the range of relationships important to one’s wellbeing, this dissertation engages with relevant literature in development studies, human geography, as well as social science research in fisheries.

Results demonstrate the complex and dynamic nature of human wellbeing, including the fundamental role culture, place, and history have in shaping diverse understandings and constructions of wellbeing. Accounts of wellbeing were found to be woven into the material and emotional realities of everyday life, illustrating how the material, subjective, and relational dimensions of wellbeing are inseparable and co-constituting. Results also show how the construction of one’s wellbeing is formed in and through a history of interactions with others and the environment, which in turn shaped one’s relational values, associated norms and behaviors, and perceptions of the MPA.

Overall, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of social science literature that investigates how one form marine conservation programming, MPAs, interacts with human wellbeing. It presents an empirical case study that advances understanding of the social and cultural constructions of wellbeing, as well as the diverse and nuanced ways people connect with others and their environment. Results from this dissertation have the potential to address persistent tensions between obtaining international targets for marine conservation and the need to ensure the implementation of equitable and just MPAs, including securing the rights of coastal communities.

In recent decades, habitat degradation and loss, transboundary pollution, resource overexploitation, and a rapidly changing climate have contributed to significant declines in global marine biodiversity. This global environmental crisis has inspired international environmental regimes, such as the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), to manage human activity and ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity by establishing large-scale networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). Conservation scientists have developed systematic methods for identifying where it is most efficient to establish MPAs, but the design and implementation of effective MPAs has been hindered by limited resources, conflict over altered access to natural resources, and insufficient spatial data. Prior research has shown that incorporating social, economic, and political considerations into the design, negotiation, and establishment of MPAs can help to overcome these challenges and more effectively achieve conservation objectives. Here, I contribute to the field of conservation planning in three ways. First, I use collaborative governance theory as a framework for analyzing the CCAMLR and identifying the key factors that lead to successful agreements to designate MPAs in the Southern Ocean. Second, I build a methodological framework that operationalizes conservation opportunity theory and enables the collection of spatially referenced social, economic, and political data. Third, I use forecasting techniques to predict the likelihood that various geographic areas along the Western Antarctic Peninsula are successfully designated and suggest how these methods can inform conservation planning. My work suggests that theories and methods from other fields have the potential to improve conservation planning efforts by structuring the integration of novel spatial data, highlighting barriers to progress, identifying structural or procedural gaps in international environmental regimes, and more broadly informing conservation decision-making. Strengthening these planning approaches is increasingly critical to the success of international conservation efforts focused on protecting biodiversity and the ecological integrity and function of the global environment.