Hearts, minds – and stomachs

When Alasdair is asked how he determined his approach during the organisation’s first few months in Madagascar, his answer is very straightforward: ‘We didn’t have an approach. We didn’t need one. We were there to listen and learn, with no predefined project agenda or arbitrary cut-off date. We monitored ecosystems and we started to understand the broader economic system. Our approach is to live with and within communities. We’re able to work in this way because we are a social enterprise and our bottom line depends on us staying in these communities. Our expeditions, which rely on this model, provide much of our funding. We see ourselves more as an R&D laboratory within which we are developing models that can go to scale through our partners.’

Having the freedom to spend time learning from the communities that they support meant that after those early years of research, the Blue Ventures teams could devise a conservation programme that was built around local needs and interests. They recognised very early on that a marine protected area would not be viable in the context of their first site in remote south-western Madagascar. The people there weren’t willing to close off the reef because they needed to fish so badly and demands on the resources were so extreme. The Blue Ventures team needed a shorter-term catalyst to show communities what they could gain from protecting their ecosystem. That gave rise to the temporary fishery closures that became the model for Madagascar’s growing network of LMMAs.

With funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation, Peter Musembi has initiated an elasmobranch conservation programme at Watamu National Park in Kenya. This is one of the oldest MPAs in Africa and very few conservationists are looking into the abundant population of sharks and rays in the region. The local fin trade is growing, blacktip reef sharks are being poached in shallow waters and elasmobranchs are consistently being found at local fish landing sites.

Peter is employed by A Rocha Kenya, a faith-based conservation organisation. His intention is to integrate science, conservation and cultural and spiritual beliefs into an environmental education programme. There are about 300,000 people living around the national park and more than 70% of them depend directly on natural resources through either tourism or fishing. As in many developing communities, there is a lot of mistrust and suspicion from the community in Watamu when it comes to resource management and Peter has a daunting task ahead of him, but as a Kenyan national he has a major advantage. He has also been working in the area for two years already, which has given him the time he needed to build relationships with local stakeholders and they are becoming more open to conversations about protecting sharks.

Echoing Bob Johannes, Peter is very aware of the significance of spiritual belief systems, especially among the more traditional members of the community. The Bajuni people, for example, moved to Watamu from further north in Kenya. They are historically linked to the ocean and Peter expects they may have some cultural beliefs that centre on sharks. ‘I have talked to a few of these people already. Sometimes they go into the ocean and before they start fishing, they will see which animals are in the water and if they see a bad omen, they will go back. We are expecting to hear more stories like this that might explain what motivates them to target some species more than others,’ he explains.

Danielle’s study hinged on the distinction between types of motivational factors: heteronomous versus autonomous. The predominant approach to community-based conservation today is to motivate people heteronomously, through extrinsic incentives such as monetary or development rewards or through legislation and threats. For psychologists, these motivators are regarded as falling outside an individual’s core values. Autonomous motivation, on the other hand, is inspired by inherent enjoyment, feelings of empathy or core beliefs around personal identity. These behaviours hinge on freedom of choice rather than positive or negative coercion. ‘In psychology we know that if someone is intrinsically motivated, that effect is going to be much more sustainable than if the motivation is extrinsic,’ says Danielle.

To explore her hypothesis, she visited communities in northern Sumatra and interviewed hundreds of participants to gain an understanding of their attitude to conservation and behaviour towards orang-utans and their forest habitat. What she discovered was that although external rewards were important, autonomous motivation was also a critical influence on people’s attitude to conservation and, more importantly, their behaviour towards orang-utans and the forest. In Bukit Lawang, the large-scale tourism operation that focuses predominately on semi-wild orang-utans has brought many economic benefits to the village, but there have been negative impacts on the animals. ‘Many people’s attitudes changed, but their actual behaviour didn’t,’ recalls Danielle. When people at Bukit Lawang were asked why they protected the animals and their surrounding habitat, they responded with answers such as ‘Orang-utans are useful to my job’ or ‘Because it is forbidden to damage the forest. It is a national park’. This is not a sustainable conservation model, because if the economic benefits from tourism or the enforcement of the national park were to disappear, so would any incentive to protect the orang-utans. Already, unsustainable conservation attitudes and motivations have resulted in unethical practices involving guides and tourists who will touch or feed the orang-utans, despite park rules not to. And on top of that, the community itself has become increasingly disharmonious.

The situation in Tangkahan village, less than an hour away, is very different. In this case, members of the community realised that logging was unsustainable and developed an environmentally sound ecotourism programme with the help of conservation organisations. ‘There was a strong core psychological motivation behind this programme,’ explains Danielle. ‘It was built for the community, by the community. They had a strong sense of ownership of and identity with the programme and their aspirations had been met.’ The community members’ responses to her questions reflected this: ‘Orang-utan is just like us, I feel sympathy for it’ and ‘I was born in the place, the forest is a part of my nature and environment’. By meeting these deeper psychological requirements, the conservation programme not only protects the animals and serves the material needs of the village, but has strengthened people’s relationship with their ecosystem. The village even won a prestigious award from the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism for excellence in pioneering community-based ecotourism.

It has become clear to Camila that the major conservation challenge in Rosario and San Bernardo Park is not that communities want to be allowed to exploit natural resources unsustainably; rather, it is the poor relationship that has developed between local people and the park authorities. She recalls, ‘When I was interviewing the islanders, the first thing they would ask was “Are you working for the national park?”’ It seems that rather than viewing the MPA as protection from industrial fishing, the islanders mistrust the national park staff, whom they regard as outsiders. In that social climate, enforcement has become very difficult. Camila asserts that the first step for any conservation programme at Rosario and San Bernardo Park would be to hire park rangers from the local community.

Peter, Danielle and Camila are just beginning their journeys in community conservation. It is commendable that they have recognised that while a solid scientific foundation of ecological understanding will always be critical, conservation can no longer belong solely to the school of natural scientists who attempt to ‘save wildlife’ by studying animals and ecosystems as if they function outside of human interference. However, it remains to be seen whether the knowledge gleaned by these young scientists will be transformed into real-world conservation stories.