There’s an abiding truth about conservation–no matter how much we may want it to be about the living world beyond humankind, inevitably it gets down to the things that people do and don’t do.
Staggering natural beauty or gut-wrenching crisis may inspire calls to action, but the change required always has to do with how people eat, live, and prosper.
Nathan Bennett is a conservationist, but his field is social science. His work, over the years has shown him how socially unaware it is possible for conservation efforts to be, and how many ways there are for it to be otherwise.
It’s a general misconception that the ocean is not a peopled place. The images of the ocean that we love often reinforce this idea. Great expanses of water stretch from horizon to horizon. Leviathan creatures ply the deep in seeming solitude; 70% of the globe is blue, more of it unknown to us than the surface of the moon.
Despite this, you can guarantee that somebody somewhere believes they a have right to some part of pretty much everything in the ocean. The high seas or Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) are ruled by conquest. Only those rich and foolhardy enough to venture into deep water earn the spoils. Nations lay claim to Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) that extend 200 miles from the shoreline, while the daily reality is that coastal waters are occupied by large commercial interests, independent operators of various kinds, and members of local communities whose descendants have often lived there, on land and on the sea, for generations or much longer.
Areas that we think of as wilderness are already claimed by somebody, with some purpose in mind.
As a consequence, when conservation measures are imposed by outsiders, it always seems unjust to those already connected to the place, and when people feel mistreated they tend to focus their energy on reversing the injustice rather than conserving the living world.
It’s a general misconception that the ocean is not a peopled place. The images of the ocean that we love often reinforce this idea. Great expanses of water stretch from horizon to horizon. Leviathan creatures ply the deep in seeming solitude; 70% of the globe is blue, more of it unknown to us than the surface of the moon.
Nathan Bennett grew up in British Columbia (BC) and began his career in environmental education. Supporting people in local communities proved to be an inspiration and this drew him into the social sciences.
Work with First Nations showed him how easily conservation processes can lead to injustice and Ph.D research in Thailand kept him connected to issues affecting coastal peoples; Work in the Mediterranean with the University of Nice and in the Gulf of California with The Nature Conservancy and Mexican governmental agencies has allowed him to apply his knowledge of coastal peoples and his passion for social justice to marine reserve planning in those areas.
Nathan jokingly refers to himself as a “Professional Idea Wrangler” at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Talk with him and you find that he is a serious but nimble debating partner, a likeable and independent thinker who enjoys the lively cut-and-thrust of discourse on ideas.
Officially he is Research Associate at the University of Nice and UBC, where he works on the FishMPABlue 2 project and the OceanCanada Partnership. He is also an Affiliate Researcher at the Stanford Centre For Ocean Solutions and is embarking on a new role as Chair of the People and Oceans Specialist Group at the International Union for The Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Allies Not Enemies
Part of the problem with ocean conservation is that outsiders have often presented what Nathan calls a “narrative of scarcity” as a slam-dunk argument for crushing local peoples’ historical rights of governance and access.
The argument sounds like this–“current practices have led to massive stock collapses in commercial species, fishing down the food web, the extirpation of non-targeted predators and widespread ecological degradation. Keep it up and pretty much all the ways that people currently make a living from the ocean around here will be defunct in short order. Therefore, accept our gift to you–widespread restrictions on your activity with strict enforcement and penalties. You might not like it now, but your children will be grateful, even if they can’t afford to live here anymore.”
The above is an exaggeration, but not by much, particularly from the point of view of many locals and especially for indigenous communities who have already put up with thousands of years of colonialism and injustice.
The view that if people don’t change their behavior and their mindset with regard to the sea then they will be forced to earn a living from it in ever more compromised ways, until eventually there is nothing left is both well-founded in science and generally accepted cause-and-effect.
Nathan’s point is that using this view as an argument to dispossess people of their rights and heritage is socially unaware: A legitimate and understandable desire to conserve results in social injustice, and in some cases violence.
In his view, to call conservation a kind of colonialism would not be too far from the truth.
As Nathan puts it, “The idea that we need to go into some place and conserve other people’s resources, that we need to change their people’s behavior is one of the most problematic assumptions that pervades conservation.”
“What they [conservationists] are thinking in terms of those environments is… ‘if we increase the numbers of fish in the ocean then human wellbeing will result… and if we don’t do it now then it’s going to lead to declines in human wellbeing.’ … What is missing from the conversation … is [that] there are people that live in those places, there are people who use those resources, there are people that have historical right or title to those areas.”
There’s a term for dispossessing people of areas of ocean to which they have historic rights: It’s called ocean grabbing. Not all ocean grabbing happens in the name of conservation, but it can. Nathan’s experience has shown him that the mindset that can lead to that outcome is as unnecessary as it is unjust.
“The reality is that people are putting forward their vision for what should happen with the ocean, people do have a vested interest in protecting resources that they might then benefit from in the future… And if we assume that they are going to wreck them, then we are perhaps way off base”.
Nathan’s suggestion is that we should instead start by asking ourselves why so many of the areas we are looking to protect are in the historical jurisdiction of local and indigenous groups.
There’s a term for dispossessing people of areas of ocean to which they have historic rights: It’s called ocean grabbing. Not all ocean grabbing happens in the name of conservation, but it can.
“One of the craziest things about the concept of creating protected areas, is that the vast majority of them have been created where indigenous people and traditional resource users still live… Why is that? Because those people have been good custodians of those areas… because the biodiversity is still high… so the idea of pushing them out and excluding them from areas which they have maintained in those states seems absolutely ludicrous.”
Accept this and it is natural that we should first ask these people what it is they have been doing right. Why these areas are somehow still the ones worth protecting despite the actions of outsiders, the forces of corruption and unchecked market forces.
“In the process of pursuing whatever [conservation] goals we’re pursuing we definitely need to be treating people as allies rather than enemies in that process… It is possible that their goals in conservation align [with ours] very closely, but if you go in and tell people what to do, they’re not going to be super happy.”
Ask, Don’t Tell
Take an inclusive approach and the tools that can be applied are numerous. Innovative schemes for dealing with the geospatial dynamics of creating marine protected area (MPA) boundaries and control rules abound. We have even seen how getting a clear picture of the values of local people can allow an entirely new understanding of the underlying mandate for protection in a given area.
Nathan prefers to focus on the process of how conservation efforts are designed rather than specific operational features. He emphasizes that in any context there are a multitude of solutions that can have merit–the important thing is to make sure that they align with the hearts and minds of the local people.
I asked him about an approach where a strict no-take zone is established in one area while supporting exclusive rights of access to local peoples in another nearby area. For Nathan, how you do it is just as important as how the strategy is structured.
“Yes, there are examples like that, and I am sometimes slightly uncomfortable with somebody else dictating [the incentive structure, e.g.] ‘we will give you this, if you do that’ – that is still somebody from the outside, asking somebody to do something to achieve their objectives rather than a negotiated solution.”
But he points to positive examples, such as “Locally Managed Marine Areas [in the South Pacific] where local communities set up an area, typically out in front of their village, and that includes areas that might be strictly protected, might be actively used or [might] contain restoration projects.”
“In that case there is often some sort of external support–NGOs are helping with expertise, perhaps with some funding–it’s not there’s no outside partnering or working together on the initiative it’s just that its quite a different way of thinking about it– as a partnership.”
Nathan’s take is that success is born out of the method used to arrive at the solution, not just how well the plan has been conceived from a purely conservation standpoint. The instruments of management are many and varied. They must be selected by the people connected to the place that is to be managed. His view is that long-term support is key and that it can’t be achieved without good inclusive process.
This can be difficult to achieve if you assume that local people are the problem. Sometimes they are, Nathan allows, but his view is that local or traditional activities may cause much less impact in comparison to those posed by outside forces.
To illustrate his point, he draws upon his experiences in South East Asia.
“Dictators can do conservation well… back when Myanmar [was under military rule], if you wanted to go to more pristine reefs, then you would go across the border from Thailand… and you would see more pristine reefs. Why? Because they had really good enforcement, supported by a military junta…” “Do I think that [a military model] is the right approach to conservation? No.”
The instruments of management are many and varied. They must be selected by the people connected to the place that is to be managed.
Doing anything worthwhile involves solving problems, but it is important to be selective about which problems you tackle first. Supporting indigenous and local people in finding genuine solutions that meet their needs may be an extremely uncomfortable–that is to say, emotional-discussion in the short term, but solutions often do exist, and if spending time on these issues means putting past grievances to rest and closing the door to larger, more destructive forces then it’s a win-win.
Also–rules created from within have a better chance of being respected versus those imposed from without.
“I can give you an example from my research in Thailand… where [I asked] small-scale fishermen on the Andaman coast… what shall we do? [about declining fish stocks], one of the ideas they put forward [was to] close some areas from fishing to let the number of fish in the ocean increase… well that’s a marine protected area, right? [then if you ask them] what do you think about these nationally created marine protected areas? [they say] ‘oh we hate them, we’re totally against them and we like to fish actively [fish harder] in those areas’ “
“There’s a difference between an externally created marine protected area that is placed over top of an area that these people rely on, and an area that’s created based on people’s own vision and desires and giving them some sort of autonomy.”
Protection comes before change. If people need to change in order to protect the environment, then the first thing we need to do is protect the people.
Social Capital
There is an unprecedented push to create marine protected areas. This is a good thing. We have spoken with some who think that proper management practice should make protected areas unnecessary, that, given the international system of laws and quotas, enough of our oceans are in effect already protected to at least some degree. In our conversations so far, the balance of opinion is that the scale of the challenge means that the idea to place large swathes of the ocean under strict oversight is the right thing to do. That the level of destruction being wreaked on vulnerable species as a result of illegal and unreported fishing and bycatch is such that it has become necessary to create areas where the living things of the ocean can go unmolested.
Making sure that MPAs are effective is a challenge in itself however.
The UN has mandated that 10% of the world’s oceans should fall under protection by 2020. There is serious doubt about how well we are doing in terms of reaching that goal.
There is also a movement to increase that goal to 30% by 2030.
Nathan is supportive of the 10% goal but is quick to point-out the potential pitfalls of adopting goals focused on percentage areas of ocean.
“I was at the World Parks Congress in Sydney where they first came up with this recommendation of 30%… it was met with disbelief, by most of the people in the crowd, because most of the people in the crowd, had no idea where that number had come from, who had decided that this was the number that we should be pushing towards, and what was the scientific basis or rationale behind that decision.”
“Targets have their place–they can potentially inspire action to protect the marine environment, but targets can also be dangerous, they can be misused, they can be used to justify actions that are questionable both ecologically and socially.”
“Some species of fish move, so [for them] a stationary marine protected area doesn’t always make sense.”
“There are other sorts of questionable actions… areas where you wonder why they want to keep people out of those areas and where it may seem that it’s more a of military rationale… that is driving them to declare a marine protected area.”
Assuming that we can manage to target the ocean habitats most worth saving-methods for understanding how static marine parks can be defined in such a way to help protect migratory and transient species do exist–it will be important to make sure that there is transparency on how those decisions have been made.
Also, Nathan’s view is that MPAs should be viewed as one of many possible ways to achieve conservation goals. From his perspective much of the language is too heavy-handed, too unconcerned with the rights of people, too socially unaware.
In a peopled sea–a phrase taken from the title of one of Nathan’s academic papers–any part of a nautical chart that you draw a line around, no matter how remote, is somebody’s home or place of work–a place they depend on or feel connected to. If you have plans to intervene there it needs to be for the right reasons, and you need to have their buy-in if you want your efforts to be a success.
Assuming that we can manage to target the ocean habitats most worth saving-methods for understanding how static marine parks can be defined in such a way to help protect migratory and transient species do exist–it will be important to make sure that there is transparency on how those decisions have been made.
In our journey so far, every person we have spoken with about MPAs has admitted that non-compliance can be a problem. What drives non-compliance? Intransigence? Cynicism? Defiance? Perhaps, but after talking with Nathan you come away with the idea that these aren’t so much unassailable problems as they are symptoms of a failed process; that perhaps compliance is not assured because non-compliance is what people naturally do in the face of social injustice.
Adopt this view and the entire enforcement discussion becomes one of how social norms get established and how they can evolve to promote virtuous cycles of improvement.
Nathan puts it simply “In locally managed marine areas, social capital is much stronger than external enforcement.”
The People and The Place
Imagine each MPA represented as a sphere. A bubble of ocean held suspended within an invisible membrane separating it from everything else. Like a balloon, the integrity of the sphere is maintained by a slight pressure difference within it in comparison to the outside. If that pressure difference goes away the balloon collapses, loses its integrity.
In the case of an MPA, the pressure comes from within–social pressure–a force expanding from the center of the sphere, pushing outwards against outside forces that would destroy what it contains.
That pressure is created and maintained by the will of the people who live in that place.
I asked Nathan, as I ask everyone, what one thing he would change. His wish is for everyone interested in a career in conservation to be required to live in the field, in the communities belonging to the areas they want to protect before they begin, and for them to see that the process of conservation is as important as the end goal.
The job of establishing effective conservation via MPAs and places like them is in large part about working with and supporting the needs of people who live in those places– about doing what it takes to understand them and to see that they have more to lose, and in many cases more to regain, than anyone else.
