The Impact of Marine Park Gazettement to Local Community Sustainable Livelihoods: A Case Study of Redang and Tioman Islands

In order to protect and conserve the threatened and endangered marine life, the government has gazetted a total of 40 islands as marine parks. With the gazettement, all activities that disrupt the stability of marine’s eco-system are prohibited. These prohibited activities include fishing, the locals’ main source of income. Thus, what about the locals’ livelihoods post- gazettement? This research is to analyze the livelihood sustainability of the locals at the Pulau Tioman Marine Park (TIMP) and Pulau Redang Marine Park (PRMP). The analysis on livelihood sustainability is based on the locals’ perceptions after the islands’ gazettement as marine parks. The five standard of living/living standard indicators which are human, physical, natural/environment, social, finance as well as threats/uncertainties towards socio-economic changes will be analysed in this research. The research results show that in general, the RIMP and TIMP’s communities’ livelihoods are satisfactory in terms of human, physical and social assets; but are still lacking in terms of the financial and natural/environment assets. The education element also needs to be addressed as there are still school dropouts among these islands’ communities’ children. Nonetheless, the locals are still safe from socio-economic threats/uncertainties and disease outbreaks/disasters. In comparing the RIMP and TIMP, it is found that the TIMP’s community has better sustainable livelihood than that of the RIMP’s locals