By Elizabeth Drury O’Neill, Tim M. Daw, MWAMBAO, Rosemarie N. Mwaipopo, and Emilie Lindkvist.

Read the full paper here.

In this study I found that why and how people followed or broke conservation rules is not black or white. Rule following (compliance) and rule breaking, (non-compliance), are not the only ways people can respond to rules. I focused specifically on marine conservation and found that simply understanding the variety of different responses to rules can help those who manage marine environments better measure or judge how people take their project or implementation. That is, better understanding the variety of responses to rules can help managers determine if people accept a conservation project or not, when they do or do not accept the project, how people accept or reject the project and by who is accepting or rejecting the project?

In our case, when managers closed a fishery to create a marine protected area, non-compliance with the closer affected different types of marine resource users who felt strongly about the noncompliance. These users include fisherwomen, fishermen, skindivers, traderwomen, and tradermen.

My research took place in three sites in Zanzibar, Tanzania and I met three times over a single week with about 80 resource users. I asked them about the closure of an octopus fishery. The octopus is an important species for selling, export and home-use in Zanzibar. They told me their individual stories of the closure, we looked at photos together (of the sea, corals, beaches, seafood, markets, tourism) and then we discussed compliance. What I found was that by carefully listening to how and what people expressed about rules, authorities, rule breaking and rule following I was able to really understand on a deeper level the whys behind their rationale. Though some groups presented themselves as rule followers and supporters of the conservation intervention, on closer reading I was able to understand on which grounds they would remove that support or potentially not comply with the rules. And visa vera, by examining how or in what manner people explained themselves, with what words and according to what sentiments, I was able to see why they might be the rule breakers.

I recommend looking beyond the “community” to different types of stakeholders for more a targeted conservation process in support of compliance, taking time to listen to conservation participants express and reason around authorities, rules and rule-breaking.