How can traditional marine resource management support a responsible fishery? Lesson Learned from Maluku

Research PaperThe current discourse on marine resource management or coastal fishery is favouring collaborative management (Co-management). That is a shared management practice between government and community. Co-management is argued to correct the ineffectiveness of centralized management system as well as empower the weakening practice of traditional marine resource management (TMRM) and communities which, otherwise, is proven more effective and promote a sustainable and socially fair resource management. Using traditional marine resource management in Maluku eastern Indonesia as a reference, my paper will examine the potency and problems of incorporating TMRM in Indonesian marine resource management. TMRM in Maluku takes the form of sasi, that is a practice of temporal prohibitions on making use of a particular resource or a particular territory. Lies at the foundation of sasi is the practice of communal marine tenure. Talking about potency, I will look at sasi practice as a good example of the ability of local community to regulate who, where, when and how people can enter and make use of their sea territory and its resources. This practice, I believe, can promote a sustainable and socially just marine resource management. However, discussing of its problems, I will demonstrate that the embeddedness of TMRM in the socio-cultural construction of the community, might constraint its effectiveness in the condition of pluralistic society. This is because, the belief system, the ritual and other socio-cultural backgrounds are only shared by members of a single community. The socio-cultural changes in the community might also create problems for the effectiveness of TMRM. An example of the latter problem will be discuss in relation to a political contestation in a community which led to the presence of an outsider fishing company that used destructive fishing methods. At the end of my discussion, I will try to propose some alternatives of promoting the potency of TMRM and reducing the problems of its application