Marine Protected Areas and the Territorialization of the Oceans in the Exumas, Bahamas PDF Download

Author: Fletcher Paul Chmara-Huff
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Languages : en
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Book Description
Abstract: Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are an increasingly popular conservation strategy that seeks to protect oceans from over-exploitation of fisheries by setting aside large spaces as reserves. While they are similar to conservation areas on the land in design and implementation, little research has examined the ways that MPAs change the ocean into a contested political space. In contrast to the historical perspective of the ocean as a weakly territorialized space in which conservation can occur with little resistance, this dissertation examines MPAs as an object that needs to be examined through the concept of territoriality. The dissertation develops a theory of territorialization as practice to analyze the process of MPA formation in the Exumas Islands in the Bahamas. The Exumas are slated to have three no-take Marine Protected Areas as part of a wider plan to set aside twenty percent of the ocean in the Bahamas. Drawing on archival and field research such as interviews and participant observation, the central argument is that MPAs are territorializing objects, and that the ways in which they are deployed can offer political possibilities for either resistance or new expressions of state power. The dissertation first analyzes three existing approaches commonly used to explain and/or justify MPAs, but finds that these explanations are wanting. It then interrogates the ways in which policy actors in the Bahamas deploy specific spatial imaginaries that frame marine conservation. It shows that policy actors are dependent on logics of state territory and natural resource management that do not fully account for resource users. Finally, the dissertation turns to the fishers of the Exuma Cays, to record both their spatial imaginaries and the ways they relate to ocean conservation as it has been imposed in places they use for their livelihoods. It becomes clear that the people of the Exuma Cays are responding to the threat of MPAs in ways that resist the conventional logic of MPA design through a variety of tactics, including declarations of local identity tied to local oceans and practices, and actively transgressing conservation spaces in a territorial fashion. Yet rather than defending a pre-existing territory, what is occurring in Exuma is in response to conservation practice. New territorial claims are being made in response to the threats of withdrawal posed by MPAs, suggesting that territoriality, as a political practice, should be considered as a social factor in conservation efforts. Through examining the logics and spatial imaginaries of MPAs, this dissertation breaks new ground regarding conservation practice to show that setting aside tracts of the ocean as MPAs is not a simple solution to the problem of overfishing. In short, MPAs are not innocent conservation programs, but rather use specific logics to territorialize the ocean in ways that exclude local resource users while protecting the economic interests of the nation-state. These territorializations are then resisted through re-territorializations by stakeholders, who deploy different logics and spatial imaginaries. Through these re-territorializations, there is the potential for a libratory politics that can contribute to local self-governance and possibly change the politics of marine conservation.