Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how communities living among the islands of Raja Ampat in West Papua engage with others to protect sea and land areas through a patchwork of endogenous and extralocal conservation practices. I argue that these interactions provide a context for ethics across social boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I identify how different values motivate distinct types of marine resource management systems in Raja Ampat, West Papua with different stakes involved for the people who support them. I document Beteo and Ma'ya peoples engagements with an institution known as sasi, a type of seasonal harvest prohibition and gear restrictions observed in several maritime societies in eastern Indonesia. 

    I highlight two distinct forms of sasi currently practiced among the Beteo and Ma'ya people near Waigeo island: sasi gereja, a type of Christian village-based resource protection common in Beteo areas and sasi mon, a set of clan-mediated rules and regulations for territories inhabited by Ma'ya ancestors or nonhuman spirit beings to ensure humans do not tip the balance of nature against them. I show how these institutions have been influenced through interaction with non-governmental conservation organizations.

In Raja Ampat, a patchwork of interlinked regimes of land and sea-based resource governance have contributed to a composite approach to adaptive governance, rather than an inherently conflicting set of practices or norms. 

    The varieties of conservation practices in coastal West Papua reflect distinct but perhaps commensurable ethical norms and values. The intensity of peoples' engagements with their nonhuman surrounds highlights how conservation in Raja Ampat is a form of ethical practice consequential to people's understanding of themselves and others. It is a way for people to position themselves as ethical subjects of different kinds, amidst ongoing resource degradation, the denial of Christian social virtue or economic marginalization.