Traditional Resource Management

Traditional resource management systems vary from island to island, yet generally the conservation technique involves the declaring of tabus that ban people from the use of certain resources for a certain amount of time. On some islands tracts of land are declared tabu by chiefs, or by clan heads who have been directed by chiefs. This is particularly the case in managing marine resources. Chiefs will mark out portions of the reef with sticks and namele leaves (sometimes also coconut leaves and croton) to define the boundaries of the tabued reef. All the reef’s resources in that area are under tabu. On other islands, individual clans are responsible for a particular species and may be directed by a chief, or on their own initiative, to declare a tabu period of that species. One example is on Tanna, where a clan looks to a certain species as its totem over which it must be steward. For example, the man of the namampe (Melanesian chestnut) clan has the authority to declare tabus on the tree, which range in length from a few months to more than a year. During the tabu period, while he works the ‘custom,’ nobody is allowed to eat the fruit of the namampe, nor is the man allowed to see his family. He must live on his own, drinking only kava, no water, he may not bathe, his food is left in the bush for him to collect, and in the nakamal (kava meeting house) with other men he must always be the first to drink the kava that is shared. When he declares the tabu over, everyone except for him may eat the nut of the namampe, only until the nut season is almost over may he taste one or two nuts and the tabu period ends for him also. The power to be the steward of the species is not passed from father to first son, but from father to the son deemed most fit and conservation savvy to take on the role.

Once a tabu is lifted there tends to be much feasting and celebrating, which may lead to a rapid depletion of the resources that were being protected. On the one hand this feast-and-famine cycle seems to undermine any notions of sustainability. On the other hand, some scientists have questioned whether or not this cycle may actually be beneficial to the life cycles of the resources. Very little research has been done in this area of traditional resource management however.

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