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Description
This thesis, through two distinct, yet interrelated and contingent main chapters (Chapters Four and Five), explores peoples’ relationships to marine environments in Moorea and the implications of these relationships for marine management. Chapter Four combines household survey data with key informant interviews to suggest how adaptive co-management may be a more suitable and more widely accepted form of marine governance in Moorea. I argue that an already demonstrated interest by fisherfolk in managing marine resources creates a suitable climate for co-management arrangements to occur. However, the management regime should focus on shared goals in order to overcome and work with preexisting conflicts over management practices in Moorea. In Chapter Five, I use a mixed methods approach to explore how stakeholders on the island of Moorea, differentially and correspondingly ‘value’ specific ecosystem goods and services of the marine environment, focusing on ‘cultural’ values. I analyze the quantitative portion of these results using geometric data analysis (GDA), arguing that GDA provides a more suitable method for investigating the heterogeneity of social perceptions and attitudes. My interpretation of these results is supported by the qualitative data I collected. The main findings include, 1) that all stakeholders view education as a gateway to more environmentally responsible behavior, though definitions of education differ, 2) that all stakeholders view economic gain to be antithetical to environmental health, and 3) that there is a tension between Tahitians desire to continue fishing and their desire to conserve fisheries. I implement an ontological anthropological framework to understand how differences in marine stakeholder’s valuations, reflect their multiple ways of existing in the world. I argue that, fundamentally, environmental management efforts need to take into consideration these ways of being in order to be effective. In sum, the arguments made in this thesis demonstrate the importance of acknowledging difference and harnessing multiple ways of being to create more effective marine management decisions, especially in highly threatened ecosystems such as the coral reefs of Moorea represent.
