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- Convenors:
-
Kyrstin Mallon Andrews
(Miami University)
Jessica Vandenberg (University of Washington)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores power regimes in ocean conservation, using ethnographic examples from Afro-Caribbean fishermen, Bajau turtlers, and anthropological researchers themselves to illustrate how colonial legacies inform ways of imagining and enacting protection for vulnerable maritime ecosystems.
Long Abstract:
The places and communities in which anthropologists work are becoming increasingly entangled with politics, discourses, and power structures of conservation (Lowe 2013; Kirksey 2015; Moore 2019; West 2016). As plans for placing 30% of earth under protection by 2030 are underway, concern has risen that large-scale protection will perpetuate the marginalization and displacement of rural and coastal people. Given how oceans have featured centrally in discussions of changing climates, marine environments have received heightened attention, and communities who rely on them have become both interlocutors and obstacles for conservation projects. This panel explores power regimes in ocean conservation, asking how colonial legacies are embedded in ways of imagining and enacting protection for vulnerable maritime ecosystems. From Afro-Caribbean fishermen, to Indigenous Bajau turtlers in Indonesia, to ethnographic researchers themselves, this panel investigates the multiple scales at which conservation power dynamics manifest, and how people navigate them. Relationships between funding agents and researchers in coral reef restoration, conflicts between conservation laws and Indigenous regulatory regimes, and the ways conservation mimics structural adjustment policies through race relations and inequity all offer opportunities to explore how ocean conservation leans heavily on colonial precedents shaping relations of power in the Global South. Providing this critical perspective on the power dynamics that drive conservation agendas and relationships will allow a way forward for ocean stewardship that can be socially just and rooted in the local socio-cultural contexts in which conservation work is implemented.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 October, 2021, -Kyrstin Mallon Andrews (Miami University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws from ethnographic research among Dominican fishermen to argue that marine conservation in the Caribbean is a new form of structural adjustment program. I illustrate how regional programs prioritize resource profitability and financial restructuring through ocean health incentives.
Paper long abstract:
Throughout the Caribbean, stark declines in fish populations and the health of nearshore coral reefs have drawn the attention of large conservation organizations. In 2008, the Nature Conservancy and global partners launched the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) in response to ecological declines of the region’s maritime territories. This initiative incentivized Caribbean island nations to put 20% of their marine territory under protection by 2020, establishing a $47 million regional endowment that would channel funds into National Conservation Trust Funds for each nation. The Dominican Republic successfully allocated 20% of its marine territory to legal protection several years prior to the 2020 goal. What do these protections actually look like at sea-level (and below), and how can ethnographic accounts from those immersed in conservation seascapes reveal alternative narratives or motives of large-scale marine protections? This presentation explores the CCI in the context of the Dominican Republic, focusing on the experiences of small-scale fishermen in these new legally protected marine territories. I argue that marine conservation in the Caribbean is a new form of structural adjustment program, one that prioritizes resource profitability and the restructuring of finances through the language and imagery of ocean health. As those who navigate ocean spaces and new legal regimes of marine protection argue, conservation attempts have had far greater impacts on maritime economic flows than they have on the health of ocean ecologies they claim to protect.
Sonja Åman (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
Through document analysis this paper examines the ways in which International Whaling Commission’s policies on Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling have come to expect extraordinary resilience and disproportionate adaptability from indigenous communities.
Paper long abstract:
In it’s nearly 80-year history, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has shifted from a “whalers club” to an international governance body chiefly focused on the protection and conservation of global cetacean populations (Birnie, 1985; Stone, 2001; Kalland, 2009). Drawing on recent scholarship on environmental dispossession and indigenous marine tenure (Coté, 2010; Norman, 2015; Reid, 2015; West, 2016; Demuth, 2019; Durney, 2020), this paper examines the conceptual history and current implementation of the IWC’s Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) policy. I argue that the IWC struggles to accommodate indigenous worldviews and ways of relating to the more-than-human due to its rootedness in colonial ideas of spatial fixity and territorialisation. As a result, disproportionate pressures are placed on indigenous communities who are forced to manoeuvre these regulatory landscapes to secure rights to their customary practices and marine-based livelihoods. This paper scrutinises the way in which international conservation models expect extraordinary resilience and adaptability from indigenous communities, while dominant models of governance are limited in their capabilities to accommodate alternative knowledge systems and ways of being in the world. Particular attention is paid to two issues 1) how legal and regulatory exclusion from marine spaces or resources disrupts both economic activities and the practice and transfer of traditional ecological knowledge for indigenous communities, and 2) how and whether lack of complexity in the ways in which marine life, particularly charismatic species such as whales, is conceptualised in regulatory policies restricts the accommodation of traditional ecological knowledge.
Jessica Vandenberg (University of Washington)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropologists have long been viewed as mediators between local communities and environmental governance institutions. This paper examines this role, by reflecting on personal experiences in the field, as a researcher observing the impacts of a coral restoration program in Indonesia.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists have long been viewed as mediators between local communities and environmental governance institutions. Working at the grassroots, anthropologists have served as cultural brokers, advocates, and change makers, providing nuanced perspectives on local issues that can lead to more equitable outcomes of interventions. Although this unique position presents numerous opportunities, it equally brings challenges and complexities, many of which are laden with power asymmetries. In this paper I discuss the influence of power on this liminal intermediary position. By reflecting on my own experience as an ethnographer working in a small island community in Indonesia where a marine conservation intervention took place, I examine this mediating role, its influence on relations between conservationists and community, and the subsequent “blurring of lines between allegiance to project and duty to humanity” (Unterberger, 2009, p. 2).