1. Coping with complexity: MPA management in Indonesia
Leontine Visser
Wageningen University, Netherlands
WorldFish Center
17 November 2009

2. Research Proposal
WU/RDS initiated workshop in Wageningen in June 2009 with WF (Dedi), IPB Bogor, ZMT Bremen; (TNC);
collaboration with Murdoch (Perth)
Funded by Royal Neth. Academy of Sciences(KNAW) and Intern. Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden (IIAS)
Interdisciplinary: anthropology (NRM, fisheries, governance), policy studies, marine biology
Case studies: Aceh, South Sulawesi, Moluccas, Papua
The idea of MPA, indigenous tenure; decentralisation

3. Marine Protected Area
Ecosystem conservation; since 1990s also including poverty reduction objective
According to IUCN definitions (Dudley, 2008:22) MPA =
Category VI protected area:
to protect natural ecosystems and use natural resources sustainably, when conservation and sustainable use can be mutually beneficial.
Issues for consideration: complexity of stakeholders, scales, governance, and resource management.

4. Starting points
Complexity is a point of departure, not end-product of study
No social-ecological systems approach
Actors (individuals; institutions) as unit of analysis
All human beings reduce experienced complexities,
- what they experience as complex differs
- how they simplify differs too
How do different actors cope with complexity?
How does simplification differently inform action?

5. Example: Legal simplificationD
Law of local govt. P
4 miles
Land C
Fishing Zone
8 miles
Zone III
Zone II
Land
12 miles
>60+
Zone I
5-60GT
Fishing license authority:
D = up to 10 GT (5-10GT Zone II, P)
P = 10+ up to 30
C = 30+ (30 – 60 GT Zone II, P) 6
Miles
<5 GT

6. Complexities
Human interaction with sea involves more than artisanal fisheries: turtle eggs trade, coral mining, tourism, pollution; at multiple social, economic (value chain), and political scales
Spatial exclusion no-go MPA; competing claims to resources; conflict and negotiation between users and institutions
Legal pluralism of overlapping and contradicting laws, rules & regulations; illegal or legitimate action?
Governance: decentralisation (1999/2004) empowerment of some, exclusion of others.

8. Product or process?
Reïfication, seeing MPA as ‘thing’ reduced to a visible, tangible object, rather than a social-econ-political process:
- spatial zoning (excl. cultural identity, tenure rights)
- social: MPA empowers women (power as property), reduces poverty (Leisher, 2009); conflict: ambiguous
- legal: MPA defines what is illegal versus legitimate - - governance: allows access of free riders, tax paying tourists; income for poor and district power holders. -

9. MPA as process
Indigenous tenurial practices, everyday negotiation of resource access and use
Real-life political-economic network of district raja kecil and traders/middlemen where decisions are made regarding value chain of marine resources
Poverty reduction of artisanal poor fisherfolk is ethically correct, but political-economically naïve.
Experiment with MPA ‘bottom up’ access monitoring owned by appropriators. It’ll give another selection and participatory mapping of ‘the idea of MPA’.