CAREER: Human Dimensions to Marine Resource Utilization in the Solomon Islands: Fostering Pacific Island Student Participation in Research and Educational Activities

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

0238539 Aswani Customary sea tenure occurs when identifiable groups of people have rights to access resources that are in principle excludable, transferable, and enforceable. This CAREER project is a five-year study that integrates research on customary sea tenure institutions and marine resource utilization in New Georgia, Solomon Islands, with a long-term educational program designed to include American students of Pacific Island descent in research and educational activities. The research focuses on key socio-cultural, economic, political, environmental, and historical factors that affect human common property regimes. The project will assess the major historical, social, cultural, economic, and political conditions of customary sea tenure institutions in the region. This will include the historical, social, political, economic, demographic, and ecological factors that may allow some institutions to succeed and others to fail in terms of environmental sustainability, social equity, and institutional endurance. The institutional conditions best suited to adapt to contemporary demographic, economic, political and social changes will be analyzed. Studying the dynamics of common property institutions and the factors that enhance cooperation amongst social actors in this case study will advance our understanding of the conditions that encourage stakeholders to protect their marine resources. The broader impacts of this research, aside from advancing the career of a young social scientist, will be its value to conservationists and policy makers in the Pacific Region. The new knowledge created by the project will to help them understand which sea-tenure programs are likely to generate successful management programs and which are likely to fail, which will help them to formulate fisheries management initiatives like marine protected areas (MPAs). The educational component of this research also has broad implications. The involvement of Pacific Island students, a group that is often underrepresented in the sciences and humanities, will give participants training in qualitative and quantitative methods that expand across disciplinary boundaries. This training will be invaluable for the participants' future research careers in science, and will enhance the participants' environmental awareness and education.