Assessing the value of approaches for Community Based Marine Resource Management (CBMRM) in Solomon Islands

Abstract

In the field of environmental management, considerable attention has been given to developing tools to harness people and their skills and capacity to effectively govern natural resources. Because of the importance of people’s capacity to influence the natural state of the environment and resources therein, researchers and practitioners have been trying to identify which mechanism could offer sound resource management at various levels. This research primarily investigated cases of successful and unsuccessful Community Based Marine Resource Management (CBMRM), particularly the ‘ways of working’ used by external partners that may influence the social behaviour of people in the community. Hence the approach was to particularly explore the ways in which community empowerment may be effective in the process of marine resource management. This has been achieved through studying three CBMRM communities in the Lau Lagoon, North Malaita, Solomon Islands. The study was centred around the CBMRM programmes focusing on three aspects: social constraints that rural Solomon Islands communities faced; intervention pathways that supported fisheries; and characteristics of places and interventions that appear to influence the probability of successful CBMRM engagements.