Managing Coral Reefs: An Ecological and Institutional Analysis of Ecosystem Services in Southeast Asia

by Kelly Heber Dunning

Overview

Managing Coral Reefs examines Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s pathways to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), focusing specifically on how regional and national policies in Southeast Asia have fared when implementing the Aichi Targets of the CBD. Kelly Heber Dunning examines CBD implementation through marine protected areas (MPAs) for coral reefs in Indonesia and Malaysia. While Indonesia uses a co-managed framework, whereby villages and governments share power, to implement its MPAs, Malaysia uses a top-down network of federally managed marine parks. Using mixed methods through interviews and surveys as well as coral reef ecology surveys conducted over a year of fieldwork, Dunning argues that co-managed systems are the current best practice for implementing the CBD’s Aichi Targets in tropical developing countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783087969
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	07/30/2018
Series:	Strategies for Sustainable Development Series
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kelly Heber Dunning is the Coastal Training Program Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute and at the Mission Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve, USA. A PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dunning’s research on Southeast Asian coral reefs was funded through a United States Fulbright Award. She has also received other prestigious awards including the MIT Presidential Fellowship and the Caroll L. Wilson Fellowship.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reefs and People

The hum of diesel engines on the black volcanic beach in the village of Tukad mungga signals the start of the working day in a rural yet rapidly developing village on the prosperous resort island of Bali, Indonesia. Cows can be heard in pens behind houses while the seemingly unending construction of scenic beach villas dims the agricultural noise, a sign of rapid economic transition in the village. Women wrapped in traditional sarongs and sashes leave offerings on the beach: colorful fruit and flowers in small woven baskets with incense. Men get up from their plastic seats where they were drinking sweet, white coffee and smoking clove cigarettes in order to drag the traditional jukung boats, brightly painted narrow vessels with slim outriggers on each side, down the beach to the water. The oldest men are wearing udeng — Hindu traditional headscarves — as they finish their cigarettes, carry their engines and propellers, fasten them to their boats and welcome the tourists aboard (Figure 1.1). Many tourists, both Indonesians and foreigners, line up in orange life jackets to fill the jukungs. Many are here for snorkeling and the popular dolphin-watching tours, while others are here for diving.

Although all of these men own and operate the boats for their income, nobody is undercutting his neighbor. Nobody can be seen on the beach trying to recruit last-minute visitors to fill seats on their boats. For those who have visited more developed places on the Balinese tourist route, where you cannot take two steps without being asked to buy something, this is unusual. It appears that a very organized system of boat entry, as well as fixed set prices, exists. Also remarkable is how each boatman informs his guests to not touch the corals if they are snorkeling — not in perfect English, but the message gets across. When I ask these boatmen why they don't offer discounts in order to take the customers of the boatmen in the next village over, they cite their membership in a community-based organization, with colorful Balinese names that reference their Hindu religion and the importance of the sea. They cite their common religion and the village bonds along the coast as reasons for working together to organize the dolphin and snorkel tourism, and say that the management organizations make both quality of life and social stability better. For example, one boatman says, "We live hard lives. This is why we need to work together. Angering neighbors by stealing customers is something we used to do, then over time, we learned it hurt us in the low season and we organized." Our conversation turns to the subject of the local reef, which has not fared well through the past thirty years due to dynamite fishing but is slowly coming back to life. All nearby members cite the village-based management as the reason for its return. "This is our reef, this is our living, and we care for it."

Now consider a second example, this time on a small white sandy island off the northeast coast of peninsular Malaysia. The Perhentian Islands, meaning "stopover" since they provided a stopover point in early shipping routes, were one of 42 peninsular Malaysian islands declared marine parks by Malaysia's 1994 Marine Parks Order of the Fisheries Act. The village on the smaller of the two islands has an enormous silver mosque that issues its thunderous adzan call to prayer five times daily, multiple food stalls where you can buy the traditional roti canai and many traditional-style Malay homes brightly painted in greens, turquoises and pinks to show the religious dedication of the families inside. The men have small motorboats, usually named after one of their children, parked on the beach as water taxis and ad-hoc stands where they arrange snorkeling tours for visitors at dozens of sites all over the islands with names like "Shark Point" and "Temple of the Sea." A massive new orange building sits on the beach nested behind two high-end resorts, multiple stories tall. Oddly enough, many days could go by before you could realize its purpose. The signage is in Malay, and there is minimal indication that this is a place that tourists may visit. In fact, it is supposed to be the Perhentian Islands Marine Parks Office. Due to its sheer size, I spent an entire afternoon wandering around trying to find somebody who worked there. Locals staffing the restaurants laughed, saying that the staff of the Park Office are frequently absent. They wish me luck finding someone to talk to.

One of the most striking sights, one that happened every single day, was how dozens and dozens of snorkelers — wearing life jackets, which often indicates their inability to swim — walked on the coral reef, which stands not even 10 meters out from the shore, directly in front and in clear view of the Marine Parks Office. Locals from the village sat nearby within their businesses, right next to signs in many languages that asked people not to touch or take the corals. They watched from their water taxi stands, their boats or from their restaurants. There was no sense or feeling that the visitors were damaging the reefs that form the underpinning of their livelihoods and take centuries to grow back after they are trampled. These threats to the reefs went completely unnoticed, day after day, often for the entire duration of the day, as dozens of people trampled the reef.

Why is there such a pronounced difference in the way the reefs are managed in the marine parks of Indonesia and Malaysia? Based on my initial site visits in the summer of 2013, I hypothesized that the form of governance, top-down versus bottom-up, might explain the difference. I hypothesized that bottom-up governance resulted in more successful reef management — from an ecological perspective and a socioeconomic one, whereby tangible social and economic benefits are linked to successful ecosystem management. My research asks how ecological governance affects societies, economies and ecosystems in the developing world and attempts to answer the question based on what I observed in five field sites in Indonesia and Malaysia over nine months of fieldwork between 2013 and 2015. I collected both qualitative and quantitative data, taking approximately 30 interviews and 50 surveys per site. I talked with a great many stakeholders. I took approximately 20 ecological surveys on living coral cover using timed swim methods to facilitate an integrated analysis across both social and ecological systems. I drew on institutional and socioecological systems theory to formulate my experimental design as well as my interview and survey instruments. I used a combination of qualitative thematic coding and statistical analysis to analyze my data. My findings lead to policy recommendations regarding the design of institutions for ecosystem management in developing countries.

1.1.1 Structure of the text

The structure of this text is as follows. Chapter 1 is a general overview of the importance of coral reefs, marine protected areas (MPAs) and how coastal systems such as these are managed.

Chapter 2 covers the theory, practice and policy context of coral reef management. It places coral reef management in multilateral development frameworks, discusses theories on management of natural resources, places the research in this book in the context of international development research and outlines the conventional wisdom on coral reef management.

Chapter 3 outlines the differences between the way that Indonesia and Malaysia manages their coastal resources, namely coral reefs, in a bottom-up and top-down approach, respectively.

Chapter 4 provides an overview of the case study sites across Indonesia and Malaysia used in this book. These sites include Lovina, Pemuteran, Amed, the Perhentian Islands and Tioman Island. This chapter also gives a brief overview of ecological findings.

Chapter 5 discusses integrated management of MPAs, or when MPAs are managed for both social and ecological considerations. Examples from the case study sites are given in order to show how co-managed MPAs and centrally managed MPAs have different levels of integrated management.

Chapter 6 discusses the different levels of legitimacy in co-managed and centrally managed MPAs in the case study sites.

Chapter 7 discusses the different levels of adaptive capacity present in co-managed and centrally managed MPAs in the case study sites.

Chapter 8 offers policy recommendations regarding integrated management, legitimacy and adaptive capacity of MPAs. It also offers key policy recommendations for Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as a general set of policy recommendations for coastal biodiversity conservation in general.

It should be noted that this book is based on a 2016 PhD thesis submitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning for a doctorate in natural resource management planning. The research was supervised by a committee with expertise in planning, marine policy and coral biology. The technical and theoretical components of interest to an academic audience can be found in the appendices. Appendix A provides an overview of the research design. Appendix B describes data and methods. Appendix C examines the biological findings on living coral cover.

1.1.2 Societies, economies and reef ecosystems

This book focuses on coral reefs because they provide a wide range of ecosystem services and are increasingly important to social and economic well-being (Hughes et al. 2003; MEA 2003). Ecosystem services are the benefits that humans derive from ecosystem functions. These are classified according to how humans derive goods and services (Costanza et al. 1997; MEA 2003). So, they are usually classified as production functions that produce or provide natural resources; regulating functions that maintain essential life support systems; habitat functions that provide space for commercially valuable species; and cultural or informational functions that provide recreation, cultural values or aesthetic pleasure to humans (de Groot et al. 2002). The full range of ecosystem services provided by coral reefs are listed in Table 1.1.

Reef ecosystem services include the following: producing fish for subsistence and commercial fishing; reef tourism, which attracts people from all over the world to dive and snorkel; buffering services, which shelter communities from extreme weather and storm surge; erosion protection, which prevents the gradual loss of shoreline; and cultural and aesthetic values, whereby people value the reef for its beauty, spiritual significance and its importance as a unique natural place (Costanza et al. 1997; Peterson and Lubchenco 1997; Moberg and Folke 1999).

Ecosystem services are very important in the context of Indonesia and Malaysia. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates that 120 million people in Southeast Asia depend directly on reefs for sustenance and to meet their economic needs. A significant proportion of the population is completely dependent on reefs for all aspects of their livelihoods (2008). Beyond those who make their living from local reefs, 60 percent of Southeast Asia's population lives on or near the coast, thus benefitting from reef regulation functions and habitat and production functions (Salvat 1992). The highest levels of coral and reef fish biodiversity in the world are in the Coral Triangle. Unfortunately, large-scale and rapid degradation threatens the ability of coral reefs worldwide, and particularly in the Coral Triangle, to provide users with ecosystem services (Hughes et al. 2005). Coral reef ecosystems pose especially difficult management challenges because high coral and fish diversity combine with competing economic uses. This means that more users are attracted to reef-based livelihoods than the system can sustain (Christie et al. 2002).

1.1.3 Contrasting governance

The key question that drives this research is how differing modes of ecological governance impact ecosystem service delivery to stakeholders. Modes of governance are a product of the politics, policies and histories surveyed in detail in Sections 3.2 and 2.1. This book looks at two countries in the Southeast Asian region with similar socioeconomic, historical and developmental trajectories but with different approaches to ecological governance. One approach is centralized and the other is decentralized. I also refer to these as top-down and bottom-up management frameworks, respectively.

Centralized governance, characteristic of Malaysia, is the most common form of governance in both colonial and postcolonial states (Christie and White 2007; Jones et al. 2016). Centralized governance is often considered the default mode of governance. It relies on the state and its authority to command and control and is implemented by a bureaucracy (Imperial and Yandle 2005; Jones et al. 2016). In Malaysia and Indonesia, the national government holds property rights and stipulates rules regarding implementation at lower governmental tiers (Imperial and Yandle 2005). Decentralized governance has increased since the 1970s, with 80 percent of developing countries allocating some responsibility to lower tiers of government (Jones et al. 2016). Decentralization transfers responsibility for management to the populations most directly impacted by resource management decisions (De Oliveira 2002). It sees smaller groups of stakeholders instead of the bureaucracy making implementation decisions.

1.1.4 Institutions: Marine protected areas

This book compares centralized to decentralized institutions. Institutions are defined as social arrangements composed of rules, labor, financing, technologies and sanctions that determine the rate and extent of resource use (Renard 1991; White et al. 1994). The specific institutions examined in this research are MPAs, defined as coastal and marine ecosystems enclosed and reserved by law (IUCN 1988, 1994). MPAs are used to conserve biodiversity, preserve areas for tourism, restore degraded habitat or restore depleted fisheries (Christie and White 2007). Due to the global decline of coral reef ecosystems, MPAs are increasingly important in efforts to prevent or reverse degradation (Hughes et al. 2003; Mora et al. 2006). The rapid pace of the decline of coral reefs has led to pressure on governments to improve and strengthen management institutions and to expand efforts to implement MPAs (Bellwood et al. 2004). Major reasons for the decline of reefs include overfishing, pollution, disease, and climate change (Jackson et al. 2001; Harvell 2002; Pandolfi 2003; Bellwood et al. 2004).

MPAs range from those that are centrally managed to those that completely devolve responsibility and authority to community-based organizations. Traditional MPAs, most often studied in the Pacific Islands, are based on animist religions, social norms and taboos (Johannes 1981; Ruddle 1994). An example of this would be closing off an area for fishing based on religious beliefs, which simultaneously allow key species to recover for the next fishing season. Community-based MPAs see the community, most typically a village, as the primary decision maker, rule creator, monitor and sanction applier. They are implemented in places where the national government is weak, financial resources are lacking and technical capacity is limited. Such circumstances are more likely to exist in developing countries (Christie and White 2007). Co-managed MPAs involve power sharing between national government and communities that depend on ecosystems for their livelihoods (Pinkerton 1989; Christie and White 1997). Co-managed MPAs often grow out of community-based MPA that have matured and earned the trust of policymakers (Christie et al. 2000). Centralized MPAs, often referred to as state or national parks, are typical of MPAs in countries in the Global North. They require strong bureaucracies and legal mandates that prescribe resource management responsibilities. These often include "zoning" or deciding where the MPA is, as well as which areas can be used for different types of extraction. Also, responsibilities can include involving users in MPA design (Suman et al. 1999). Centralized management does not preclude resource user involvement (such as commercial fishermen and the dive industry), but responsibility for implementation is usually in the hands of the central bureaucracy (Suman et al. 1999). Centralized management typically has its main office headquarters in the administrative capital, with regional offices located on site.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Managing Coral Reefs"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Kelly Heber Dunning.
Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Theory, Practice and Policy Context of Coral Reef Management; 3. Governing Natural Resources in Indonesia and Malaysia; 4. Case Study Sites and the Coral Triangle; 5. Integrated Management of Marine Protected Areas; 6. Legitimate Marine Protected Areas; 7. Adaptive Capacity of Marine Protected Areas; 8. Policy Recommendations for Marine Protected Area Management in Developing Countries; Appendix A. Research Design; Appendix B. Data and Methods; Appendix C. Coral Cover Results; References; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In Managing Coral Reefs, Dunning has taken on one of the most difficult problems in marine policy—that of comparing the effectiveness of top down versus bottom-up institutions for conserving biological diversity. […] A range of specific policy recommendations makes this work essential for both the practitioner and the stakeholder.”

—Porter Hoagland, Senior Research Specialist, Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA

“This timely book [...] is a worthwhile contribution to the growing literature on marine protected areas, conservation and management.”

—Lyndon DeVantier, coral reef ecologist