Troubled Water in South-Western New Georgia, Solomon Islands: Is Codification of the Commons a Viable Avenue for Resource Use Regularisation? by Shankar Aswani 1
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2 SPC Traditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin #8 March 1997 Troubled water in South-western New Georgia, Solomon Islands: is codification of the commons a viable avenue for resource use regularisation? by Shankar Aswani 1 In recent decades there has been a growing interest in indigenous sea tenure institutions and their possible role in establishing a framework for sustainable resource use and conservation. Yet the feasibility of these institutions to cope with social and economic changes have been seldom explored. In this paper a case study is presented where internal de- regularisation of the ‘commons’ is the result of existing socio-cultural principles combined with outside influences. Two territorial models are compared to elucidate emerging internal instabilities of sea tenure institutions and possible ways to correct existing problems. The codification of the commons is suggested here as a possible measure to strengthen indigenous common property regimes. Introduction While numerous anthropologists have been unre- lentingly critical of resource economists for accept- Few publications in the last two decades have incited ing Hardin’s thesis, anthropologists themselves so much academic debate as Hardin’s (1968) ‘Trag- have uncritically accepted the notion that common- edy of the Commons’. Hardin’s thesis contends that property regimes are conducive to resource-use unregulated access to common property resources, regulation. This leap of faith is clearly apparent in such as open sea fisheries, leads to unchecked exploi- the field of maritime anthropology, where numer- tation and environmental degradation. Hardin pre- ous authors have argued that indigenous environ- scribed that to prevent this ‘tragedy’, common prop- mental knowledge, cultural practices and marine erty be ‘privatised’. This idea has appealed to many tenure are responsible for the conservation of ma- Western economists and biologists because of its sim- rine resources (Cordell, 1989; Dahl, 1988; Foster and plicity. The common-property debate has not been Poggie, 1993; Hyndman, 1993; Johannes, 1978). limited to the academic arena, but has had sweeping implications in policy formulation. Numerous re- In recent decades there has been a great deal of in- source economists employed by government and terest in indigenous sea-tenure institutions and non-government organisations around the world their possible role in establishing a framework for have granted Hardin’s thesis the status of divine law. sustainable resource use and conservation. The vi- ability of these institutions to cope with social and Hardin’s thesis, however, has not been left undebated. economic transformation, however, has seldom A myriad of researchers have pointed to Hardin’s been established. conceptual confusion between common property (res communis) and open access (res nullis) (Berkes, 1989; In reviewing contemporary changes in community- Ciriacy-Wantrup & Bishop, 1975; McCay & Acheson, based marine resource-management institutions, 1987). Under a common-property regime, participants this paper presents a case study in which internal in the commons present outsiders from accessing re- de-regularisation of the ‘commons’ emerges from sources while enforcing resource-use limitations on a consideration of existing socio-cultural precepts their participants. Conversely, an open-access regime and the influence of outside forces, and suggests is a situation where there is no resource-access exclud- some measures to strengthen indigenous common- ability or harvest control (Feeny et al., 1990). Hardin’s property regimes. To illustrate this process two semantic confusion between ‘common’ and ‘open’ ac- marine territorial arrangements in the Roviana La- cess has been seized on by anthropologists who have goon, South-western New Georgia, Solomon Is- shown, through numerous case studies around the lands, are compared: the ‘ territorial – enclosed’ and world, that common-property regimes are controlled the ‘mosaic’ models of property relations. and regulated by identifiable groups of people2. Such studies suggest Hardin’s ‘tragedy’ is avoidable. 1 Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. 2 The rejection of Hardin's thesis by anthropologists seems contradictory because Hardin's prescription for 'tragedy' is 'privatisation' or equitable to corporate tenure or 'common-property' regimes as understood by other social scientists. However, Hardins enclosure of the commons really pertains to individual tenure rather than corporate tenure (i.e. commu- nal ownership), and, therefore, 'common property' regimes as understood by anthropologists are still qualitatively different to individual 'privatisation' of open space access resources as forwarded by Hardin. March 1997 SPC Traditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin #8 3 The former is a situation where territorial bounda- enous sea tenure institutions to deal with contem- ries are well-defined, jurisdictional power is central- porary problems of inshore fisheries management. ised, and sea-space entitlements are regionally rec- It is not an overstatement that reducing entire socio- ognised by local communities. The latter is a con- cultural phenomena to their fisheries management dition where territorial boundaries are not secure, utility is a lesser evil in the face of dwindling global administrative control is decentralised, and sea- resources and exploding human populations. space entitlements are regionally scattered and con- tended by local communities. The disagreement between anthropologists and re- source economists on the regulatory characteristics It is argued here that whereas both models suffer from of common property regimes originates in the con- internal regulatory instabilities, the ‘territorial – en- flicting goals of each discipline. The anthropolo- closed’ model of sea tenure provides a more stable gist’s objectives are to ensure the rights of marginal framework to establish co-management goals than populations, whereas the economist’s main goal is the ‘mosaic’ model of property relations. to achieve economic efficiency (Brox, 1990). Rather than dichotomising the commons into an ‘either/ Instabilities in these two systems originate from the or’ situation, it is more fruitful to recognise that, like centralisation of chiefly power and the structural flu- private property and state property, common prop- idity of the Roviana kinship system. The first di- erty regimes can be effective in regulating resource lemma results from chiefly control of territorial seas use and access in some cases and cannot in others and the lack of involvement of the subject popula- (Bromley, 1992; Quigging, 1988). Although this has tion in the protection and monitoring of the ‘com- been recognised by some social scientists (Carrier, mons’. The second dilemma follows from the 1987; Feeny et. al. 1990; Ruddle, 1996), the general Roviana bilateral kinship system, which links indi- trend in the anthropology of marine common-prop- viduals to multiple kin groups, thereby permitting erty regimes is to reaffirm indigenous rights by pro- the accumulation of land and sea entitlements. This, moting the notion that sea-tenure institutions are in turn, allows fishers to have access to multiple ter- designed to conserve resources. ritorial seas and enable competing groups to use their tenure rights for territorial expansion. The same proc- Admitting that micro-tragedies may take place in ess has been noted by Hviding (1996) in nearby some regions does not diminish the importance of Marovo Lagoon, although Hviding has not seen it as indigenous sea tenure as a fisheries management problematic. The internal instabilities of these two re- tool. Conversely, accepting its vulnerability to in- gimes are considered problematic here only as far as ternal de-regularisation may actually strengthen their managerial effectiveness is concerned. co-managerial effort between outside forces and local peoples to prevent further ecological degra- Effective regulatory measures imply monitoring, dation. Co-management as understood here is a control, and enforcement of existing access and har- joint effort between local peoples, government and vesting rules. Although its focus is narrow, this defi- NGOs to implement regulatory measures to man- nition differentiates itself from the more ambiguous age small-scale inshore fisheries. indigenous ‘cognised’ view of territorial enforce- ment. ‘Cognised’ control is how people having rights to a given sea area perceive their access and user rights and those of others. Effective control, on the other hand, is the actual physical enforcement of those rights to prevent free-riders from over-exploit- ing resources and interlopers from trespassing into a territory. The cognised view of property relations has been used by anthropologists to refute Hardin’s assertion that ‘freedom in the commons brings ru- ins to all’ (1968: 1244). But little attention has been paid to the ‘actual’ social and ecological practices which define the failure or success of a common property regime to regulate its resource base. Some social scientists have justly argued that sea ten- ure does not occur in a social vacuum and, there- fore, cannot be solely reduced to issues of fisheries management. Further, they contend that sea tenure should be viewed in the larger context of indigenous rights to resource control and political autonomy (e.g., Hviding, 1996; Ruddle et.