Fairness and marine resource management: exploring principles of distributional equity in Fiji

Marine resource management initiatives invariably result in costs and benefits to local stakeholders. Understanding local stakeholders’ perspectives of what constitutes a fair distribution of management impacts is critical... [ view full abstract ]

Marine resource management initiatives invariably result in costs and benefits to local stakeholders. Understanding local stakeholders’ perspectives of what constitutes a fair distribution of management impacts is critical not only to ensuring that conservation contributes to human well-being but also because it is instrumental to achieving biodiversity gains. Indeed, given that disparities in how distributional equity is conceived are a key source of management-related conflict, identifying how such conceptions vary among social subgroups is imperative to achieving successful management outcomes. To this end, we explored coastal community members’ preferences for alternative benefit sharing arrangements in relation to tourist revenue associated with a payments for ecosystem services project involving a marine protected area in Ra province, Fiji. Using semi-structured interviewers, we elicited 122 individuals’ preferences for alternative benefit sharing arrangements that represent different principles of distributional equity: egalitarianism; utilitarianism; and proportionality (four forms based on need, opportunity cost, contributed effort to project management, and property rights). We also examined whether community members’ preferences for alternative benefit sharing schemes varied according to their position in society. Our research highlights the need to take into account the pluralistic nature of distributive equity when developing marine resource management initiatives.