Cesar2000-Economics of Coral Reefs.pdf

tribution of benefits is one of the most important causes
of intra-village conflict. The results of the econometric
analysis also confirmed the earlier finding that ‘national
rules adopted locally’ have significantly higher perceived
compliance than either purely national or local rules.
The analysis failed to detect significant differences between
the perceived compliance with purely national or
purely local management rules.
The ‘inability to exclude outsiders’ variable was puzzling
at first. Since there is a nearly perfect correlation between
open access and Tonga sites, the characteristics of
open access sites are captured by the Tongan dummy
variable. Open access sites appear therefore to have
worse perceived threat trends than sites with restricted
access, which is consistent with empirical evidence. In
restricted access sites, however, the results appear to indicate
that the less capable the village is in excluding
outsiders, the better the perceived compliance. One explanation
for this is that the variable is not continuous.
When decomposed into its underlying categories, it shows
that where decisions to include or exclude outsiders are
made at a level above the village — e.g., by paramount
chiefs in Fiji — sites tend to have significantly worse
perceived compliance. This is consistent with village reports
in Fiji that non-resident paramount chiefs occasionally
grant licenses to outside fishers, an action that is
viewed negatively by the resident community (and
which may lead to a perceived higher level of violations).
Population growth rates (‘population pressure’) did
not seem to affect perceptions of success. The results
seemed to indicate, however, that the higher the population
density, the lower the perceived threats. This may
be due to the fact that population density may be capturing
other site characteristics, as sites with high population
density tended to also have undeveloped fishing
technology. When technology was accounted for in the
model, population density became no longer significant.
4. DISCUSSION
The study was experimental in both its application and
content. Being the first of its kind in the Pacific Islands,
there was no way to know which questions would work
best in the socio-economic context of the sites. The
limited empirical knowledge on factors affecting the
success of coastal resource management also forced the
study team to collect a large number of factors, with
little guidance as to which might be most important.
In the absence of baseline data and a common intervention
across the sites, it was inherently difficult to
prove a cause-effect relationship between success factors
and perceptions of success. Many of the policy and process
factors collected initially were endogenous: it was
difficult to know whether, for example, perceived CpUE
trends had improved because of government support to
a site, or whether government support was provided to
sites with mostly poor (or good) trends. The same difficulty
in explaining causality arose with such important
factors as the presence of an external partner, conflicts,
dependence on resources, and most policy explanatory
factors. The study team attempted to deal with two key
endogenous variables — government support and dependence
on resources — by estimating a two-stage least
squares model, in which the endogenous variables were
regressed against a set of instrumental variables otherwise
unrelated to perceived success. This model, however,
resulted in imprecise estimates and no conclusions
could be drawn on the impact of these variables on
perceived coastal management success (World Bank
2000a).
While perceptions were stated over a ten-year period,
most explanatory variables reflected conditions at the time
of the survey. It was assumed that conditions had not
changed significantly during this period. This is not an
unreasonable assumption about many of the socio-cultural
and ecological characteristics of the sites, but it may
be more problematic for other variables included in the
analysis. In addition, some inherent site characteristics explaining
variations in the stated perceptions may have not
been captured by the survey. While the study attempted
to deal with these constraints as far as possible, they
should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.
Within the above constraints, the study methodology
worked surprisingly well. Initial fears that the communi-
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND MANAGEMENT ISSUES RELATED TO COASTAL RESOURCES IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
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