Conférence internationale Biodiversité: science et gouvernance
Atelier 13 - Diversité biologique, diversité culturelle : Enjeux autour des savoirs locaux
27 janvier 2005
KNOWING AND MANAGING BIODIVERSITY
IN MAROVO LAGOON, SOLOMON ISLANDS
Edvard Hviding
Marovo Lagoon, located in Solomon Islands, is an ecologically diverse environment
dominated by 700 square kilometres of coral reef. It is delimited by a long, uneven
chain of raised barrier reefs and backed by high volcanic islands that are covered
with rainforest. In 2004, around 12,000 people lived in some 50 villages, mainly on
the lagoon coasts of the high islands. Household-based production is still centred on
the shifting cultivation of root crops (mainly sweet potatoes), reef and lagoon fishing
and a small but diverse cash sector. In 1995, the Marovo Lagoon with its perceived
combination of biological and cultural diversity was being considered for inscription
as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The basic relationships between people, land and sea in Marovo are between
kin-based groups and delimited territories of land and – usually – sea and reefs. A land
and sea-holding kinship group bears the same name as the territory its members own,
live on, use, and manage as communal property handed down through many
generations. There is a saying which sums up this foundational relationship between
people and environment: “Kino pa Marovo ieni soto pa tututi oro soto pa puava” (“Life of
the Marovo people is joined to genealogy and land”). This mutual relationship between
defined units of people and defined units of territory and environment is seen as
fundamental for the continued lives of both.
Marovo people’s knowledge of the environments of sea, reef and rainforest is dynamic
and constituted in an ongoing process of transmission, individual learning and collective
wisdom. In the Marovo language, there are names for 500 plants, 70 birds, 350 fishes,
and 100 marine shells. Added to this are some 50 distinct terms for forest types, land
topography and freshwater systems, and more than 80 separate terms for reef types
and underwater and coastal topography. Through this wealth of terms and concepts
relating to the marine environment, the people of Marovo organize and operationalize
their knowledge of the migration patterns and seasonal aggregations of important food
fishes. Land-related terms for forest zones and topography guide the hunter and crop
cultivator in their search for game, wild honey, medicinal plants and good plots for new
gardens. Environmental knowledge is rather equally distributed in terms of both gender
and age since both men and women work on both sea and land.
A normal day’s fishing at the barrier reef includes a multitude of fishing activities such
as underwater spear fishing off the ocean-facing reefs, hook-and-line fishing along
lagoon shores, and gill-netting on the reef flat, carried out individually or in groups of
two or three. The choice of fishing method varies throughout the day in response to
changing tides, winds and currents. These decisions are rooted in a complex and
fine-tuned system of knowledge of fish behaviour, reef topography and climate, which
also carefully takes into account lunar and seasonal cycles.
From a quite early age, Marovo children are adept with fishing lines and large
machete knives, and from the age of seven, they may paddle out in small canoes on
the lagoon in the vicinity of the village and build up their fishing skills. As children
Conférence internationale Biodiversité: science et gouvernance
Atelier 13 - Diversité biologique, diversité culturelle : Enjeux autour des savoirs locaux
27 janvier 2005
from quite a few Marovo villages paddle daily to school, their maritime orientation
deepens and builds the foundation for teenage and adult lives, when men fish on the
outer reef and women fish and collect shellfish from inshore reefs and mangroves.
Chiefs and other leaders in Marovo have initiated and supported academic research
in the area by social and natural scientists, with the aim to document resource use,
management institutions and traditional environmental knowledge. A special request
in this regard has been the production of an environmental encyclopedia for use in
primary, secondary and community education, based on the fundamental premise in
Marovo culture that one cannot manage, nor properly use, the resources of reef and
rainforest without having sufficient knowledge of them.