Fiji Case Story: Accounting for Success in Community-based Monitoring
Since January 1996, BSP and its partners (University of the South Pacific, Rainforest Alliance, South Pacific Action Committee for Human Ecology and Environment, WWF-South Pacific, and the Fiji Department of Environment) have been working with community members in the county of Verata Tikina, Fiji to monitor their marine resources. So far, it seems to be working. Many of the ingredients discussed above might help explain why.
For centuries, Fijians have relied on marine ecosystems for their food and livelihoods. Today, however, community members in Verata Tikina, a county of seven villages, are worried about threats to their marine resources caused by overharvesting and siltation. They want to control overharvesting and, at the same time, find alternative sources of income.
Community members monitoring "kaikoso" clams in |
Fiji's biologically diverse coral reefs are attracting global attention as potential sources of novel chemicals that may hold cures for cancer, AIDS, and drug resistant bacteria. BSP and its partners have been working with community members to monitor their resources and to enhance their economic returns by developing a biological prospecting agreement between local communities and pharmaceutical companies. Together they are working to establish new policies that will allow the benefits paid from the chemical screening of the marine organisms and possible drug development to go directly to local communities, instead of exclusively to national coffers.
In Fiji, marine resource tenure is community based. "Communities know the reefs like we know our backyards," says trainer John Parks, who facilitated the communities' design of a nearshore marine resources monitoring program. Fijians live in highly structured, tight communities and possess strong traditional ecological knowledge of their ecosystems. Villagers take a highly communal approach to decision-making and have close contacts with their government officials.
In 1996, the Verata communities participated in resource assessments that prioritized their villages' needs. Community members mapped their villages, identified perceived problems, and discussed how to solve them. Then, in April 1997, a two-week workshop in participatory biological monitoring was held in Verata. Representatives from all seven communities participated and numbers swelled as more villagers, intrigued by the goings-on, joined in. Participants identified local marine resource-management problems, developed action plans to meet the challenges, and designed monitoring plans to judge the success of the interventions. Two tabu sites (no-take zones) were identified and approved by villagers to allow comparison of the levels of organisms in harvested and nonharvested sites, to study recovery rates, and to conserve biodiversity.*
At the end of the workshop, the villagers invited 40 government managers on a field trip to view the monitoring in action. "The government officials saw that the village residents were perfectly capable of doing a fairly sophisticated level of quantitative monitoring and that such efforts could clearly complement policy level actions," says Parks. "They were amazed at the ability of the Verata people to monitor their resources and explain the importance of the results. Some admitted they thought such skills could only be developed through formal university education."
In fact, the government representatives were so impressed that they asked for a training workshop to be held for their own government departments and also brought in NGOs. At this workshop, held in July 1997, 30 more participants learned the techniques and theory of participatory biological monitoring methods and assisted the Verata people in their monitoring exercises.
Through their participation in BSP's monitoring workshops, Tomitiani (Tomu) Boginavalu and Pio Radikedike, the administrative chiefs (mayors) of two Fijian villages in Verata, have developed a passionate commitment to monitoring and sustainable resource use. They are seeing, for example, that controlled harvesting is allowing the recovery of the saltwater cockle, known as "kaikoso," in the no-take areas. Kaikoso was chosen by the community as an impact indicator. It is easy to count and measure, and it is a resource that the community values. Tomu recently presented his concerns about coral harvesting at a Verata council meeting. The council endorsed his concerns and presented a motion to ban coral harvesting to the Tailevu Provincial Council. Strong local leadership seems to be critical to working with the larger community and involving the appropriate stakeholders.
 Pio presenting monitoring results to his community |
Pio and Tomu believe their villages' unity is a key to successful monitoring. "A Fijian traditional village has a cooperative spirit," explains Pio. "In social settings like this, their advice is, 'Do the training in each village because then the people see what the training is all about. Don't just send one or two people somewhere because, if there is just one voice, it won't be heard . . . more people reinforcing and emphasizing -- that really works.
Everything is done communally so everyone in the community needs to be aware. There will be more discussion about it, more questions asked, more issues coming up. It helps the whole process. Even when we have a bowl of grog, then we can explain to the rest of the communities what monitoring will bring to the future of our children."
As a result of having seen the training done in the village, many people are interested in the monitoring. "We have to explain at the village meetings what the monitoring team has done and what is being learned," says Tomu. "The community has learned from the training that, although everyone has an opinion, if you have information, that is not just an opinion. Then people accept what the information is telling them."
"From the start," recalls Parks, "nobody told the Verata community what they should monitor. It was their decision entirely. All you can do [as a trainer] is facilitate a process. Monitoring has to belong to the community. It has to be fully participatory. If at any stage it becomes yours [the outsiders], you've lost it."
