Conservation capacity development’s ripples of change and challenging undercurrents: Learning from fishing community experiences with long-term collaborations for equitable, sustainable coastal resource management in Tanzania

Abstract

Conservation capacity development has been widely promoted as a key mechanism to achieve sustainable natural resource management, yet persistent inequities, unclear assumptions, and limited evidence of long-term impacts raise questions about its effectiveness and fairness. This dissertation addresses these gaps by examining the context, processes, and outcomes of conservation capacity development through the lens of social equity in the study of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Rufiji-Mafia-Kilwa (RUMAKI) Seascape program’s nearly two decades of collaboration with community-based organizations in the coastal fishing community of Somanga, Tanzania. This case study research investigates how capacity development has been implemented, experienced, and applied by local actors and the implications it holds for implementing equitable, sustainable coastal governance.To explore these issues, I employed a qualitative, co-developed case study design to holistically reflect on conservation capacity development experiences. I collected data through key informant interviews, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and validation workshops in 2023 and 2024, which I complemented with a review of gray and scientific literature on Tanzania’s coastal governance and policy context. My data analysis combined thematic inductive and deductive coding, guided by literature on capacity development and theories of social learning and multidimensional social equity (i.e. recognitional, procedural, distributional, and contextual equity). The study findings reveal that WWF’s long-term engagement fostered significant learning that community participants leveraged in their community-based organizations for coastal resource management and livelihoods, and, ultimately, improved acceptance of fisheries co-management. Community views shifted from resistance to active participation in coastal governance. Conservation capacity development contributed to these processes by increasing environmental awareness, leadership, entrepreneurship, and community inclusion in natural resource management. However, inequities remain in access, participation, and leadership for the community-based organizations and their engagement in externally led opportunities like capacity development. The findings of the case study demonstrate that conservation capacity development in a coastal fishing community involves a wide diversity of processes, learning can ripple out from individuals to community organizations and wider social units towards adopting new beliefs and practices that result in social and environmental change. These change processes are dependent on trusting relationships, opportunities, and motivations to engage in and apply learning from the capacity development that is deeply influenced by historical, political, social, and economic structures. While case study findings are limited to a singular program and village in Tanzania, other tropical, coastal fishing case studies could also apply the case study methods and approaches to analysis to assess broader applicability. Based on the case study findings, future efforts to strengthen conservation capacity could advance from ad-hoc, brief technical trainings toward more transformative, equity-centered approaches that recognize community agency, redistribute design or decision-making power, and address the broader systemic factors shaping local coastal resource management. Theories or expertise from behavioral science and educational fields could inform future capacity development research and practice in addressing how adults learn and apply their learning in coastal resource management. Further equity analyses could improve the design and evaluation of conservation capacity development to identify barriers and opportunities to fair practices and wider acceptance of sustainable natural resource governance practices.