The ‘Subsistence Curse’: How Subsistence Affluence in Melanesia Helps and Hinders Marine Resource Management and Biodiversity Conservation.
Simon Foale, Australian National University
Because ‘Fortress Conservation’ is both morally indefensible, and practically unachievable in Melanesia, western conservationists and scientists who wish to help stem the loss of ‘globally important’ marine biodiversity in this region are compelled to embed conservation schemes in projects that alleviate poverty and deliver sustainable economic development. However if we set aside rent-based systems such as mining and industrial logging, capitalist modes of development have had a very low rate of success in Melanesia, for two main reasons. Firstly, given the traditional Melanesian emphasis on redistribution, rather than accumulation of material wealth, social pressures to share profits inevitably lead to the rapid collapse of most business enterprises. Secondly, average human population densities in the region are very low, which means that most people know that if and when their development project does fail, they can still eat, as there is plenty of land on which to grow enough food to survive.. In this paper I combine case studies of failed conservation-and-development projects in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands with recent social data on how Solomon Islanders are thinking about the perennial ‘development dilemma’ posed by social pressure to redistribute capital. I contextualize this scenario with recent ecological thinking about the ‘resilience’ of coral reef ecosystems to a range of pressures, including unsustainable harvesting of various fish and marine invertebrate species, sedimentation (mainly from unsustainable logging operations), and global warming.
