Fishing for fairness : poverty, morality and marine resource regulation in the Calamianes Islands, Philippines

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways local people understand and represent the relationship between poverty and the environment. It does so through a case study of fishers' responses to marine resource regulations in the Philippines. Set in the 'resource frontier' of Palawan's Calamianes Islands, the thesis develops an explicitly cultural perspective on environmental politics. It draws on data from fieldwork with fishers, government and NGO officials, fish traders and tourism operators to show how the strategic responses of fishers to conservation initiatives are couched within particular cultural idioms. Tapping into broader notions of morality in the Philippines, fishers express a discourse that emphasises their poverty and the obligations of the wealthy to treat them with fairness. By deploying this discourse, fishers are thus able to reframe what are — on the surface — questions of environmental management into issues about poverty within particular social relationships. By using a cultural political ecology framework to analyse fishers' responses to regulation, this thesis describes fishers' distinctive contributions to the outcomes of marine resource management initiatives.