Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human Territoriality in Conservation Conflicts: Territorial Tactics of Marine Reserves in the Bahamas

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Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are an increasingly popular strategy for conserving marine resources. MPAs set aside a portion of the ocean as a nature reserve from which limited or no fishery resources may be taken. This study will look at the proposed creation of three "no-take" MPAs in the central Bahamas to question the ways that MPAs create state controlled territory in a space that is assumed to be non-territorial. The typical assumption in conservation policy that oceans are non-territorial, and hence open access, potentially overlooks existing claims to territory by local fishers. Existence of these previous claims may contribute to local resistance to conservation projects. This study breaks new ground by investigating how de facto territories of fishers are overwritten by MPAs. The study will examine multiple viewpoints by looking at ways that policy makers, marine scientists, fishers, and other stakeholders conceive of the spaces of the ocean in terms of resource use. The research seeks to answer three questions: 1) Do local fishers make claims to de facto territories that are then subsumed by conservation areas, and if such territories exist, where are they, and how are they conceptualized? 2) What are the understandings of ocean space held by other actors in the MPA creation process, do they contribute to conflict over conservation, and if so, in what ways? 3) Do MPAs change both local spatial practices and territorial claims, and if so how do they change? Data will be collected to answer these questions using semi-structured interviews and participatory mapping of the ocean. The inclusion of policy makers in this data collection will allow for the documentation of additional competing claims. By collecting spatial data about the ways that people claim part of the ocean as territory, this study will be able to look at how competing claims to ocean resources overlap with conservation policy and thus lead to conflicts. While previous studies in the area have documented that people in general support the idea of conservation, there are unanswered questions as to why those same people may strongly opposed MPAs as a conservation strategy. This study will likely show how resistance to conservation projects may not necessarily be an opposition to conservation per se, but about the right to control traditionally used spaces. By investigating both the spatial practices and the local perceptions of the spaces in question, this study will contribute to a more robust understanding of marine environmental conflict, and of human-environment relations more broadly. Further, the lessons from this study may also provide avenues for further research on conflict over other forms of conservation. This study aims towards an understanding of conservation conflicts as a spatial, territorialized power relation operating at several scales. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to provide a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.