Conservation and Protected Areas on South-Pacific Islands: The Importance of Tradition

Abstract

The natural environments of the South Pacific islands are degrading rapidly. The region suffers one of the highest rates of species extinction in the world, and has probably the world's highest proportion of endangered species per unit land-area. Most island ecosystems in the South Pacific are totally unprotected, and many are rapidly diminishing in area or at least deteriorating in quality. The practice of conservation through conventional forms of protected areas has been ineffective in Pacific countries, having been applied in ignorance or denial of traditional practices or tenurial arrangements when such traditional patterns are often crucial to the maintenance of South Pacific cultures. Only approaches to conservation which embrace the multiple and subsistence uses of natural resources by island communities are having success.