Lessons from Coastal Marine Resource Management in Pacific Island Countries. ‘Interactive Governance’ Sheds Light on Coastal Zones as Social Systems

presentationSince the 1990s Pacific island countries have been host to a plethora of projects to improve the management of coastal marine environments. Some of these have been about strengthening Indigenous and community-based forms of resource management. Some have been about building government capacity and strengthening legislative frameworks. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been established in many locations. After more than twenty years, however, in most areas coastal environments are still not well protected from the deleterious effects of fishing or other human activities. This paper builds on a review of coastal marine resource management projects, drawing on the lessons learned to identify what needs to be done to improve protection of coastal environments. The main problems visible in the projects reviewed result from inadequate understanding of, and attention to, the various stakeholders involved, and their relations with each other. It is widely accepted that greater understanding of the social is needed to understand the human dimensions of natural resource management, but policy makers have struggled to move beyond the inadequate response of contracting a social impact assessment. The Interactive Governance approach offers a way of understanding the social aspects of coastal environments that integrates social with ecological and economic knowledge that is potentially far more useful