|
Note
from the editor
It is my profoundly sad duty to inform those who
have not yet heard that Robert E. Johannes has passed
away. Bob died on 4 September 2002, after a long
and valiant struggle. All of us miss him deeply,
but none more than his wife Christa and son Greg.
We send them our deepest sympathy.
Many things are being planned in Bob’s memory.
One is that the next issue of this information bulletin
will be devoted to him. Many contributions have
been already promised, and we invite all readers
who wish to contribute something about Bob to e-mail
their contribution to me at mb5k-rddl@asahi-net.or.jp.
Please send it as soon as possible, as we’d
like to have the next issue ready by the end of
the year.
Bob Johannes contributed greatly to the establishment
of this Information Bulletin, and he was a frequent
contributor. So it is fitting that he is an author
of two of the three articles in this issue.
In the first, 'Did indigenous conservation ethics
exist?', Bob re-addresses one of his strongly held
beliefs, that establishing whether a conservation
ethic exists in an indigenous culture is a vital
first step in determining how to help its people
live within their natural resource limits. Some
societies understood that their marine resources
were limited and introduced appropriate marine conservation
measures, whereas others had no need to because
their abundant marine resource base always exceeded
harvesting pressure. 'A worldwide survey of relevant
literature would show', Bob suggests, 'that societies
that developed conscious conservation practices
were usually small and relied on natural resources
that were circumscribed and thus easily depleted.'
Would somebody kindly undertake this topic as a
doctoral dissertation?
The second contribution is 'Evolution of village-based
marine resource management in Vanuatu', by Francis
R. Hickey and Robert E. Johannes. This article is
condensed from their report to Environment and Development
in Coastal Regions and Small Islands platform, UNESCO.
In l993 a study of coastal villages in Vanuatu
revealed that within the previous three years there
had been a rapid increase in marine resource management
activities. The initial impetus for this was the
Vanuatu Fisheries Department’s promotion of
a voluntary village-based trochus management programme.
Initially the programme involved only a few fishing
villages out of a total of several hundred. The
l993 study revealed that villages that followed
the Fisheries Department’s advice found it
so profitable that other villages quickly followed
suit. Many villages decided to implement their own
conservation measures to protect other marine animals.
In 2001, the authors resurveyed 21 of the villages
surveyed in 1993, to determine how successful these
community-initiated management measures had been
in the eyes of the villagers. The results revealed
that village-based marine resource management measures
had more than doubled between 1993 and 2001. There
was a total of 40 MRM measures in the 21 villages
in 1993. By 2001 five of these had lapsed but 51
new ones had been implemented.
The third article is by Armagan Sabetian, and entitled
'The importance of ethnographic knowledge to fishery
research design and management in the South Pacific:
A case study from Kolombangara Island, Solomon Islands'.
Armagan Sabetian recorded the structure of a traditional
Solomon Island village fishing system to demonstrate
the value of ethnographic knowledge in fishery research
design and management. The purpose of conducting
a baseline ethnographic study within an indigenous
Melanesian village was first to record traditional
fishing knowledge and behaviour through systematic
interviewing, and second to record fishing activity
through a CPUE survey.
Please keep you contributions coming. We need your
news and announcements too.
Kenneth Ruddle (
ii3k-rddl@asahi-net.or.jp)
|
