Government-supported, village-based management of marine resources in Vanuatu

The Fisheries Department of Vanuatu catalyzed a striking upsurge in tradition-based marine resource management in fishing villages in the early 1990s. Of 26 villages surveyed, only one had not introduced new village-based marine resource management measures between 1990 and late 1993. Although government assistance and advice in this connection covered only one species, trochus, the success of conservation measures for it prompted villagers to introduce controls over fishing for many other species of fish and invertebrates. Vanuatu’s experience yields many lessons for initiating effective, inexpensive, government-assisted, village-based marine resource management. It also reveals how a local shoestring operation can have much greater success that a fisheries development project costing tens of millions of dollars.