Funding:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Participating Staff:

Research Objectives:

The multidisciplinary Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons Marine Resource Management Project brings together scholars and students from the University of California Santa Barbara, University of Otago (New Zealand), and Solomon Islands to investigate:

- Regional spatial patterns of settlement and their resulting impact on property configurations

- The transformation of regional demographic patterns and their effect on common-property institutions, particularly sea tenure regimes

- The impact of economic development on sea tenure institutions

- Regional differences in cultural knowledge regarding tenure rules and their social and environmental consequences

- Documentation and correlation of indigenous ecological knowledge with Western scientific knowledge (e.g., spawning aggregations)

- A longitudinal analysis of marine harvest effort patterns (1994-2002)

Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons, New Georgia, Solomon Islands

Research Results:

It is expected that research resulting from this project will present:

- A detailed account of the impact of contemporary demographic, economic, social, political and ecological transformations on indigenous common-property institutions

- A better understanding of the relationship between indigenous and Western ecological knowledge

- A longitudinal analysis of human foraging strategies and their impacts on regional marine ecosystems

Policy Implications:

The ultimate goal is to establish sustainably managed marine areas under customary tenure in the Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons, Solomon Islands. We expect that this effort will result in the following:

- Establish co-management plans between local community customary institutions, provincial and national governments, and non-governmental organizations working in the region. Managerial initiatives will take into consideration variability in regional sea tenure regimes and institutional frameworks to formulate effective managerial policies within each identified institution

- Assist local communities in establishing local conservation initiatives through increasing their understanding for the need to protect their natural resources, providing technical assistance, and training local communities to monitor and enforce any local initiatives

- Support regional coastal and marine biodiversity by protecting vulnerable species and habitats

- Encourage local developmental initiatives to establish sustainable resource use projects, as alternatives to more damaging activities such as live reef fish trade and logging

- Collate an environmental dictionary of marine, estuarine, and inshore marine organisms for the purpose of environmental education at the local, national, and international levels

- Integrate the research results with provincial and governmental developing regional coastal

- Integrate research and management results with ongoing WWF regional projects for better social and environmental management

This project forms the research baseline for the recently established initiative: "Rural Development and Community-based Resource Management in the Solomon Islands." Both, the MacArthur and Packard funded projects offer UCSB prospective students in anthropology and marine science ample opportunities to get involved in fieldwork in the region.

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