Institutional resilience of sasi laut, a fisheries management system in Indonesia Ingvild Harkes1 and Irene Novaczek2 Draft, not for quotation Paper to be presented on the 8th Biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) entitled: “Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millennium”. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, May 31-June 4, 2000. Abstract In Maluku Province, in eastern Indonesia, natural resources are managed under a locally defined set of rules and regulations called sasi. Sasi has been in place for over 400 years. It is embedded in the local culture and based on customary law (adat). While sasi, or remnants of it, are still being practiced on most islands (Ambon, Seram and the Lease Islands), in parts of Maluku it is in the process of dying out. From 1996-1998 a study was carried out by researchers from ICLARM (Philippines) and Yayasan Hualopu, a local NGO, to study the presence of sasi, the degree of activity and the reasons for loss or survival of sasi. The results of the study can be useful in the revitalisation of traditional institutions or in the process of institution building in the context of co-management. Introduction Maluku is a province of over a thousand islands (see map). The island communities are highly dependent on marine resources. Over the past 30 years, there has been an expansion of the small-scale commercial and industrial fishery in the area. One unfortunate result is increasing conflicts between traditional fishers and industrial fishers, destruction of coral reefs by illegal fishers and decline of fish catches (Zerner 1994). Because of the size and complexity of the area, fisheries management, stock assessment and law enforcement are expensive and difficult. Since the 16th century, resources in Maluku have been managed under a system called sasi. Sasi can be defined as a set of regulations that govern resource use and that seem to specifically aim to avoid the premature harvest of forest and marine products (Nikijuluw 1995). Sasi is usually applied to specific areas on land or in the sea, but can also concern social behaviour. Marine sasi (sasi laut) prohibits the use of destructive and intensive gear (poisonous plants and chemicals, explosives, small mesh lift-nets), but also defines seasonal rules of entry and harvest and activities allowed in specific parts of the sea. The regulations are guarded and enforced by an institution known as the kewang, which functions as a local 1 Institute for Fisheries Management and Coastal Community Development (IFM), Denmark; E-mail: [email protected] 2 Holland College, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada; E-mail: [email protected] 1 police force. Their legitimacy, as well as that of the sasi institution itself, is based on adat or customary law. Despite its profound cultural embeddedness, sasi has changed under external influences such as trade (the spice wars), colonisation (by respectively the Portuguese, the English, and the Dutch), religion (Christianity and Islam), and the merger into a national government structure in the 1970’s. Current threats to the system are modernisation, commercialisation, and the general loss of traditional values. As a result, some villages have not been able to maintain sasi. At the same time, however, other villages have a strong and functional sasi system both on land and water. This paper tries to analyse when sasi, or aspects of sasi, disappeared, which factors cause its decline, but also which factors make it survive. Understanding this process and the factors behind it will help to develop, maintain, or revitalise sasi and other fisheries management systems. The first part of the paper presents the general patterns of decline of sasi in the region. The second part is more in-depth and tries to uncover the changes and factors that influence the elements of the sasi institution in selected villages. In the synthesis and conclusion the results of the two studies will be compared and combined in order to identify what we have learned from the system. Institutional resilience of sasi laut is studied as a part of the Fisheries Co-management Project of ICLARM/IFM in collaboration with Yayasan Hualopu and Pattimura University in Ambon, Indonesia. The research is funded by DANIDA, IDRC and the Netherlands’ Government. Institutional resilience defined The questions above can be translated in what is called institutional resilience. A social institution consists of all the structural components of a society (patterns of behaviour) through which the main concerns and activities are organised and social needs are met (Goddijn et al 1980). This general definition can be narrowed down when we look specifically at resource management systems. Berkes and Folkes (1998) distinguish two major functions of a resource management institution: 1) To control access to the resource to exclude foreigners, and 2) To institute rules among users to solve the conflict between individual and collective interests in order to equally divide the resource benefits. The first is called the exclusion problem, the second the subtractability problem. A useful definition then is the one by North (cited in Berkes and Folkes 1998) who describes an institution as the formal and informal constraints or rights and rules and their enforcement characteristics. Examples of formal constraints are rules, laws and constitutions; informal constraints are norms of behaviour, conventions and self-imposed codes of conduct. Resilience can be defined as the degree to which a system can cope with change without collapsing, or, the ability of a system to absorb perturbations by actively adapting to an ever changing environment (Folke and Berkes 1995). Pollnac (1994) adds to this that the degree of adaptability depends on the specific circumstances of a system. Reduction in resilience means that vulnerability increases, with the risk that the system crosses a threshold and collapses (Folke and Berkes 1995). In other words, where institutional resilience is low, the management system is likely to collapse. 2 Institutional resilience can therefore be defined as the formal and informal rules and regulations that are in force to secure the right of exclusion and extraction. Important hereby are the enforcement characteristics of those regulations and changes as a result of internal and external influences. Methodology The study of institutional resilience was part of a larger study on the performance and impact of the marine sasi system (sasi laut) in Maluku using the Institutional Analysis Framework (ICLARM-IFM 1996). The overall study comprised four components: 1) Identification of the extent and operation of sasi laut systems in 63 villages in the Lease Islands, 2) A performance and impact analysis of the sasi laut system in 22 villages, 3) Comparative institutional analysis of six case-study villages, including biological surveys, and 4) a study on the market structure, fisheries policy and the role of the state in fisheries management. The project results are described in Novaczek and Harkes (1998). Village Sasi Island Nolloth Strong Saparua Haruku Strong Haruku Tuhaha In the process of revitalisation Saparua Hulaliu In the process of revitalisation Haruku Toisapu- Disappeared Ambon Hutumuri Seri Disappeared Ambon Table 1. Case study villages and activity of sasi The resilience study is based on quantitative information from the inventory, the performance study, and the comparative case-study of villages with active sasi and those where sasi has disappeared or is in the process of revitalisation (Table 1). In addition, key informant interviews covered questions on 1) the objective of sasi, 2) the rules and regulations, 3) the role of traditional village institutions, 4) boundaries, 5) compliance and enforcement, and 6) external factors having an impact on the institution. A central issue in asking these questions was change over time. Objective of sasi The general objective of sasi, according to the respondents, is to protect resources from theft and destruction through active monitoring and enforcement. In Nolloth, for example, there are lengthy closed seasons and a minimum legal size for top shells (Trochus niloticus) harvested. In Haruku, destructive and overly efficient gear types are banned. Thus in these cases sasi does have a conservation objective. Nolloth also illustrates that sasi has developed a more economic function with the harvest rights of top shell being auctioned off by the village government when they became more commercially interesting in the 1960s. This was to the dismay of some villagers who saw their personal direct benefits decrease. A shift from communal harvests to the sale of marine harvest rights occurs in most villages where sasi is revitalised by a local government with commercial interests. In both Tuhaha and Hulaliu, village heads plan to auction the harvest rights and use sasi revenues for village 3 development. However, fishers declared that they would respect sasi only if they would get direct benefits from a communal harvest. Rules and regulations Nolloth, Haruku and Hulaliu have written sasi regulations. The set of rules comprises operational rules which specify the products under sasi, gear restrictions, and the timing of the harvest, and collective rules which define the decision-making process for closures, access, and enforcement. The third level, the constitutional rules, is defined through adat. Adat prescribes which persons are involved in sasi and what their role is, e.g. who or which clan is responsible for decision-making, conflict resolution, execution of ceremonies and enforcement (see also Ostrom 1990). The process of decline involves non-compliance to operational rules but this in turn is directly dependent on the effectiveness of the collective choice rules. In Hulaliu, for instance, a conflict between the village head and kewang in which the kewang’s rights were neglected (i.e. a collective level problem), was the root cause for sasi to decline. Subsequent problems with compliance (operational level) were secondary.