Place-Based Conservation: Lessons From the Turtle Islands

By Lejano, Raul P Ingram, Helen

IN THE EARLY 1980s, a team of Philippine conservationists armed with little more than a flashlight crafted a program to conserve marine turtle eggs, which were being harvested in the Philippines’ Turtle Islands and sold as a delicacy. The rate of eggs conserved on the islands, which are home to several endangered turtle species, gradually rose from 50 percent before the program was implemented to about 80 percent in the late 1990s. In 2000, the makeshift program was superceded by the national Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, which completely banned the collection and sale of marine turtle eggs in the Turtle Islands. The rate of egg conservation took an alarming drop in the year immediately following enactment, and by 2003, it was estimated that only about 40 percent of the eggs were being conserved. How is it that the team of conservationists, largely lacking resources and authority, put together a program that was more effective than the national conservation program that followed? Best Practices?

The environmental management field is rife with descriptions of what are often called “best practices.”1 The essential idea is that since the problems we deal with are global and pervasive, the best strategy is to look for cases of successful program designs and replicate them. The result is to create standard blueprints for resource management that are then re-applied from place to place. As Fikret Berkes, a professor at the University of Manitoba’s Natural Resources Institute, describes and then critiques, these blueprints are idealized models for conservation that essentially become known as panaceas.2

The process typically goes like this: Powerful international actors, particularly aid agencies, environmental NGOs, and think tanks, convene and craft treaties and initiatives that establish universal principles or best practices for how to deal with issues like biodiversity, climate change, and forests. These blueprints are then translated to conditions that are tied to international and regional aid programs like World Bank grants and loans. At the same time, a host of powerful NGOs wrap their efforts around these ideas and proceed to advocate them. The models that emerge from these actions are well crafted, appealing, and universal in their language and logic for implementation.3

But reports increasingly describe how even the most cherished models for environmental management, those which may have proven successful in some places, run aground when exported to other settings.4 For example, the model of protected areas (that is, nature reserves or parks) for tropical forests has in many cases failed to curtail forest destruction, alienated local communities, and proved impossible to sustain politically and economically. 5 Similar conclusions have been drawn in the case of no-take marine protected areas (also called marine sanctuaries), where problems range from the use of inapplicable rules to normative disagreements over the model.6

Real-world variety and complexity can swamp the conceptual simplicity of any idealized model. Elinor Ostrom, a leading researcher on collective action and resource management, and her colleagues have studied a large number of conservation initiatives, seeking to extract those quintessential elements of successful programs.7 Most interesting of the types of programs she studies are those directed toward management of common pool resources. Here, rights to manage a resource belong not to the state or private individuals but to a community; the resource is jointly owned, non- divisible. In her book, Governing the Commons,8 Ostrom describes a rich universe of community-based schemes of resource management and lists a set of basic rules that underpin successful program design- for example, that boundaries of membership must be effectively enforced, that there should be public participation every step of the way, and that a more or less formal set of sanctions should be set for violators. But note that even these well-reasoned rules also constitute a blueprint. They may not suit individual cases and cannot be followed in practice without unintended negative consequences. Not long ago, NGO members in Danao Bay, Philippines, examined their coastal management program and found that the rules did not predict program success and failure very well. For example, though they did not enforce membership rules, this stance of openness created an apprecation among non-member fishers and prevented freerider behavior. The way other fishers internalized the organization’s rules in fact compensated for other gaps in the design of the program, such as the high real costs of implementing sanctions against violators.9

Later in their research, Ostrom and her colleagues describe how programs to manage common pool resources actually exhibit diversities of design beyond simplistic models.10 Perhaps, though, the most fundamental problem is not the models themselves, but the thought that models are the same as programs-that is, the idea that a model can be directly put into practice regardless of the contingencies of place. A more recent notion of adaptive management has arisen as a response to the gap between the simplicity of the model versus the complexity of situation.11 The case of species conservation on Turtle Islands illustrates how a program can be designed to fit its context, and the dangers faced when the effort to achieve fit is not sustained. From this case study, we can draw out policy implications and lessons on exactly what the notion of “fit” entails.

Case Study: Integrating Turtles and Community

The Turtle Island municipality is a group of six small islands in the southwestern tip of the Philippines, about 40 kilometers north of Sandakan, Malaysia (see Figure 1 above). The islands range in size from 7 to 116 hectares. They were first settled around 1949 and subsequently incorporated as a municipality in 1959. First settled by members of the Jama Mapun, a traditional ethno-linguistic Islamic clan, the islands have more recently seen the entry of varied groups of people, particularly in the 1990s.

Along with three similar islands on the Malaysian side of the border, this island system is the most important major green turtle rookery in Southeast Asia, and several endangered species of turtle, including the rare hawksbill turtle, nest and breed there.12 While primarily marine, the female turtle returns to land to lay its eggs. Egg clutches are small pits, 12-18 inches deep, in which the female deposits 40-190 eggs and covers them with a layer of sand.

Local Management: Pre-1980s

Beginning in the 1950s, residents of the Turtle Islands realized there was demand for turtle eggs, considered a culinary delicacy, in Taiwan and other parts of Asia. Mostly under the supervision of the mayor of the Turtle Islands, residents collected eggs during peak seasons each year and sold them in the black market in nearby Sandakan, Malaysia. Residents who worked as gatherers would often, but not always, be paid with a share of the turtle egg harvest.13 Conservation of the eggs, and preservation of the species, was not consciously practiced and seems to have been maintained simply because during non-peak seasons, the undisturbed turtle eggs were able to hatch and maintain the turtle population at some viable level.14

Over time, there arose in the islands a system of role players who each contributed to the egg-harvesting program. Among the Jama Mapun, a community of local experts, sometimes referred to as “egg probers,” trained themselves to read signs in the sand and trace the locations of the egg pits. The most expert of these could locate these pits without destroying so much as a single egg and could read a turtle’s tracks and tell whether she had laid eggs or simply burrowed in the sand.

Integrated Management: 1980s -1999

In the early 1980s, a rag-tag group of conservationists from within the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources came onto the scene and attempted to “rationalize” the system. Initially called the Task Force Pawikan, the group evolved into what was later known as the Pawikan Conservation Project (PCP). The PCP sought to create a program that allowed residents to continue collecting revenue from turtle egg harvesting while ensuring that a sufficient store of eggs was conserved to build up the turtle population. This involved creating a scientific system of resource management and a system of nurseries to protect eggs and gather data on hatch rates. As part of this process, the PCP formalized the roles of the egg probers, enlisting them as local wardens.15 They also built formal notions of equity into the system, such that each family residing on the island would receive regular permits for turtle egg collection. These permits, which allowed each family so many days’ collection, were received by each family about once every three years.

The rules of the program were such that on all the islands except for two (Lihiman and Baguan), 60 percent of the eggs would be harvested, 30 percent left in place and conserved, and 10 percent allocated to a conservation fund. On Lihiman and on Baguan, which had the highest egg yield of all the islands, no harvesting would take place. These practices were formalized in Ministry Administrative Order No. 33, which was issued in 1983 and acknowledged local jurisdiction over turtle conservation activities. Stemming from initiatives by the local government and the PCP, what was negotiated and allowed to evolve was a finely tuned mechanism for controlling the rate of harvest of turtle eggs, allocating the revenues from their sale, and increasing the population of sea turtles. By the late 1980s, it was estimated that more than 70 percent of the Turtle Islands’ eggs were conserved and the rest harvested and sold. That rate gradually improved until the late 1990s, when about 80 percent of the turtle eggs were being conserved instead of harvested (see Figure 2 on this page).16 Designing the program took several years, during which the PCP worked themselves into the social network of the place by establishing their presence, attending meetings, and helping with unrelated activities such as furnishing a local school. They also sought out a coalition of actors who could run the turtle conservation program and had discussions with the mayor, council members, and others about how the program could be designed, how egg harvesting could be equitably distributed, and how local wardens could be recruited.

Lacking the resources and authority to impose a model of best practices on the Turtle Island community, the PCP improvised, finding ways to create a program that fit local conditions. We see this in a number of features of the PCP program (see the box on page 23). When PCP members, both Manila-based and local, were asked to explain why these practices came about, the response was invariably that these were required in order to be part of the place. The Tagalog word used in this vein is pakikisama or, loosely translated, “belonging.”

Enter the Blueprint: RA 9147 of 2001

In July 2001, in what was understood as a significant victory for the environmental community, the Philippine congress passed and President Arroyo signed the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act (Republic Act No. 9147) in compliance with the Philippine government’s commitment as member of several international treaties. The act was subsequently translated into actionable regulations by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in its Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRRs) for RA 9147. In particular, RA 9147 and accompanying IRRs prohibited the collection of threatened wildlife and byproducts except for scientific or propagation purposes; as a result, the collection (and sale) of marine turtle eggs was banned in the Turtle Islands. This was reinforced by Presidential Proclamation 171, which declared the Municipality of Turtle Islands a wildlife sanctuary and protected area, thus effectively transferring jurisdiction over resources in the area to the national government.

Much of RA 9147 was grafted from international treaties, a handful of them clearly foremost in the minds of the RA 9147′s authors. These include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1973), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (signed in Kuala Lumpur, 1985), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (signed in Rio de Janeiro, 1992).

It is not hard to trace provisions in RA 9147 to the requirements of these treaties. RA 9147 directly addresses requirements in the Convention on Biological Diversity for the adoption of legislation for the protection of threatened species and the establishment of a system of protected areas. It addresses the CITES requirement for regulation of export of endangered species or their specimens (for example, taking turtle eggs to Sandakan, Malaysia), primarily for non-commercial purposes. Particularly threatening to the residents of the Turtle Islands are provisions in RA 9147 for establishing critical habitat areas and the right of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary to buy or expropriate such lands as necessary.

The Philippine government is under considerable scrutiny with regard to its progress in compliance with the treaties, and their progress is tied to multilateral aid. For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity establishes mechanisms for financial support of developing countries, naming the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank as the oversight body. The GEF, in turn, allocates funding according to a periodically updated Performance Index that is based on three sub-indices: the Project Portfolio Performance Indicator, the Country Environmental Policy and Institutional Assessment (CEPIA) Indicator, and the Broad Framework Indicator. RA 9147 was part of the package that goes into a favorable CEPIA rating. In general, these indices determine the transfer of millions of dollars in GEF funds each year; presently, the Philippines’ allocation is US$6.6 million.

Pressure also comes from the community of scientists and NGOs who aggressively lobby legislators and agency officials to comply with these treaties. In many cases, these NGOs control considerable resources, too-the Worldwide Fund for Nature, for instance, has a Philippine office, and the Foundation for the Philippine Environment, which was created through a debt-for-nature swap, has an endowment of $22 million.

How the Community Reacted

The ensuing turn of events is perhaps best summed up in a series of communications between the Turtle Islands Municipality and Manila. In 2002, the municipality wrote the following:

Presidential Proclamation No. 171 amounts to an impairment of the territorial integrity of the Turtle Islands; . . . broader considerations of peace and order and economic stability justly demands the recall of Presidential Proclamation No. 171. . .we, the inhabitants of the Municipality of Turtle Island, have resolved, to petition her Excellency, the President of the Philippines, to recall Presidential Proclamation No. 171 and to continuously implement MNR Administrative Orders. Nos. 08 and 33.17

An even more surprising action was taken by the Municipal Council:

[T]aking into consideration that almost 90% of the municipal revenues and income are being generated from marine turtle eggs, and likewise, the majority of the constituents of Turtle Island depend mostly on turtle eggs collection and fishing venture for their livelihood . . . this Honorable August body with manifestation states and prays . . .

That the municipal government shall assume a full control management and supervision over its resources and conservation projects, and to administer over its territorial and administrative jurisdiction as being guaranteed under R.A. 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991 . . .

That the Sangguniang Bayan [Municipal Council] shall maintain its legislative function, legislate their own resources of taxation and revenue measures and whatever necessary provided under RA 7160.18

These communications amounted to no less than a usurpation of power, negating the jurisdiction of Malacanang Palace in Manila and the seat of the Philippine government, and maintaining the autonomy of the local community. The unraveling of the conservation program resulted in the termination of the permit system and associated egg conservation practices.

Almost immediately after the signing of RA 9147, turtle egg conservation in the Turtle Island system ceased altogether, and depletion of turtle eggs proceeded at an alarming rate (see Figure 2). One preliminary assessment estimates that egg conservation rates dropped from about 80 percent to 40 percent in a span of about a year.19 In fact, over the last few years, Department of Environment and Natural Resources personnel have been physically prevented from visiting the Turtle Island system and monitoring activities in the area.

As of last year, however, the PCP and people from the islands began talking again and called a five-year moratorium on RA 9147. During this five-year period, parties will discuss options for turtle conservation, in the hope of finding an alternative that somehow integrates both the national conservation agenda and local priorities for livelihood and autonomy. In the meantime, the group will return to the pre-RA 9147 system of management. There is even talk these days of the PCP resuming their presence on the islands.

Policy Implications

The PCP created a program that was in some sense sustainable: Not only did it run from the early 1980s until the late 1990s with no major conflict, it also succeeded in increasing the rate of egg conservation from about 50 percent before it was implemented to about 80 percent when it ended.

What did the PCP get right? First, they quickly realized that they could not impose a pre-designed model but rather had to co- design a program with the locals. This meant sharing authority, roles, and decisionmaking.

Second, they deliberately sought a way to integrate their mission with local ways of doing, knowing, and valuing. They grafted their formal egg conservation program onto the existing system to improve monitoring and create an equitable egg harvesting quota system, always in a way that did not alienate but, instead, integrated. Multiple values were recognized; conservation was not the only important value being served.

Being woefully short of resources, the PCP improvised, using local resources and knowledge to run their own program. Thus, they merged their scientific practices with the local egg probers’ expertise and formally employed them as wardens. They used local tools, such as nets and boats. Program functions, such as censuring poachers, were routed through the existing network of families and elders. They wrapped their organization around the existing system of local government.20

Most importantly, the PCP recognized that a program is a network of relationships that needs to be established and nurtured. It is important that the PCP team did not install their new program that first year on the islands. Instead, they worked at establishing a presence, developing it slowly over the course of several years. The importance of relationships runs counter to the impression one gets from the commons literature: that rules and roles and other formal dimensions of a program are what count.21 Rather, on the Turtle Islands, we found mostly informal practices. Rules were constantly being changed, and roles were fuzzy, but the relationships were well developed. What is the alternative to this integrative, relationship- based mode of action? Some kilometers west of these Philippine islands, across the marine boundary, are three islands on the Malaysian side (also known as Turtle Islands). There, the Malaysian government employed a different model. Instead of consciously integrating ecological objectives with community, the strategy was the classic model of the nature reserve. To create a national park, the Malaysian government had to buy out the residents and physically relocate them off the islands. Once the islands were cleared of residents, the government then instituted a large corps of park rangers to manage the islands. Data suggests that almost complete conservation of turtle eggs has been achieved on the Malaysian side (though the rate of poaching is not known), but the arrangement was much more expensive to carry out than the PCP program, and it displaced what once was a thriving community.22

From these examples, we can draw insights on how ecology and community development might be integrated.

First, program designers can go beyond the generic model of the program they are pursuing and instead look for the finer details that separate what works and what doesn’t and why. They can study the underlying behavioral logic of these programs that directs who is to do what, when, and why, and compare it to what is actually taking place on the ground. Where the logic deviates markedly from observed behavior and cultural practice, alternative tools and designs that fit better must be found. Program designers must search broadly among a variety of programs beyond those aimed at particular problems and deliberately pick and choose different design features with an eye to fitting them to the local context. It is important to ask, “What is unique about this community, this ecology, this place?”

They can co-design their program with locals, asking them what the community can contribute to running the program, what existing methods can be used for the program, and who would need to be involved.

They also can consciously work on relationships, periodically renewing them, whether formally or informally. This may involve assigning one or more people to be caretakers, those whose task it is to maintain healthy relationships with different policy actors. It may also entail a “blending-in” period upon arriving at a new place, where the first year or so is spent just building relationships. The ostensibly unproductive appearance of this period of introduction needs to be discussed with program proponents and aid agencies.

They can evaluate these relationships. Often, in program evaluation of community-based projects, the reason for project failure is attributed to this or that person’s animosity, this or that political feud rather than to design flaws that exacerbated tensions and undermined trusting relationships. Regardless of formal rules, property rights, and such, if the relationships are not healthy, then neither is the program. In the Turtle Islands, RA 9147 can be seen as a severing of the relationships that the PCP labored to develop through the years.

Finally, it is worthwhile to recognize the efficiencies of integration. Most often, integrating ecology with community is desired out of ethical considerations, but there is an efficiency argument to be made as well. In very real terms, it costs more when the model does not “fit” local conditions. Ill-fitting models can be sustained, but only at greater cost to the state and to local residents. This is what we see in the national park strategy on the Malaysian Turtle Islands. In some cases, it may be advantageous to estimate the resources saved by not imposing a pre-packaged plan.

Conclusion: Lessons on Belonging

The case study from the Turtle Islands illustrates what it means for a program to “fit.” Ecologies are complex-for example, the nature of a fishery in one setting differs from that in another- such that a particular strategy that worked well in one place may not work in another.23 So for a program to fit, it must not simply be imposed upon a community. The details of a given program may not match the community’s agenda and capabilities. A program to empower women to manage water resource facilities, for instance, will not be appropriate in a town where most of the women are the primary income generators or where many of the workingage women work overseas. A program based on joint community administration of common property forest areas may not work when there is serious division in the community or where a local boss commandeers most of its resources. Instead, project proponents can custom-tailor the program for local conditions, with the help of the community.

“Fit” also means that, in some cases, the program is not simply constructed using resources brought in from outside, but perhaps made with local resources as well. This is especially relevant in very poor or very remote areas where the state may have a hard time bringing in the capital, labor, and other resources to create a new program. For instance, a fisher’s program in one town had so little income that participants did not have a dedicated meeting hall, so meetings were held in homes on a rotating basis. This kind of improvisation makes the program take on the look of its local setting.

Lastly, fit means seriously considering the complexity of context. Instead of imposing simple design rules, such as those that include whole watersheds or ranges for mammals, project proponents can learn from what is already on the ground. They can seek out the knowledge that residents have of complex realities and how they interact. They can study the specific social networks in the place before and throughout the design of a program. It is important, too, for project proponents to understand the culture of the place. Far too many times, the authors encounter a community group who tell of how a group of well-meaning biologists arrived at their locale and, as they pursued their vision of ecological conservation, proceeded to essentially alienate them.

A simple notion underlies the turn to more context-attentive management regimes: the ethics of place involves not just individualistic thinking but also respect for tradition, community, and collective action. This basic logic stands in direct contradiction to the models of the commons that we have at the moment, which design programs around the fundamental assumption of purely selfinterested individual behavior.24 A revolution in thought occurs when one moves from a basic model that asks, “What’s in it for me?” to one that asks, “What’s in it for us?”

There is a necessary element of innovation and adaptation that must occur in creating programs that fit their context and value their community.25 Innovation does not mean reinventing the wheel but, rather, tailoring a program to the needs and aspirations of a specific community, including its people and, in the case of the Philippines, its turtles.

The Turtle Islands system in the Philippines is among Southeast Asia’s most important major nesting grounds for the green sea turtle, shown above.

FITTING THE PAWIKAN CONSERVATION PROJECT TO ITS CONTEXT

The Philippines’ Pawikan Conservation Project (PCP) worked to create a program in the Turtle Islands that fit its context by addressing key elements:

* Egg conservation program. PCP did not seek to institute 100 percent egg conservation, which was the official state policy. Instead, it supported the local practice of partially harvesting the eggs for income, leaving the rest for conservation. PCP members formalized the harvesting into a permit program to ensure that each family had a fair share of harvest each year. Over the years, they began encouraging locals to increase the rate of conservation-as seen in Figure 2, the rate of egg conservation rose from 50 percent at the start to about 80 percent by the late 1990s.

* Management. Instead of creating a new, stand-alone bureau on the Turtle Islands, the PCP shared responsibilities with local government. For example, the local mayor and councillors had primary responsibility for running the permit program.

* Merging local and agency science. The PCP created a turtle nest inventory program using the traditional egg probers to locate and inventory nests. They combined these local skills with the PCP’s capacity for data management and analysis (such as keeping statistics of nestings and running a model to predict sustainable yields the following year). Another example of merging the PCP and local ways of knowing is the designation of Baguan and Lihiman islands as no-take harvest zones, which cohered with local traditions that they were the burial places for two “sharifs” or Islamic holy men.

* Censure of violators. The PCP team would occasionally hear about people who had been poaching (generally residents of Taganak Island). Rather than confront and censure an individual directly, the PCP members would instead seek out the person’s elders on Taganak. They would then ask the elders to reason with the guilty party and explain the benefits of respecting the no-harvesting rule. This action would ripple outward, leading to other measures, such as a dissemination of information to the rest of the system. Other times, the team would physically encounter poachers and, instead of apprehending and incarcerating or fining the poachers, they would require the person to assist the PCP in their everyday conservation activities for a month. The wardens thought that such practices were more effective and that the violators would never engage in these activities again. * Patroling. PCP members would patrol beaches against poachers (those who harvest eggs without a permit), but they employed a mode of “patrolling without patrolling.” Before setting out, one of them would project his voice as a warning to would-be poachers to leave the area, a strategy designed to avoid confrontation. During times of great need in the local populace-for instance, when a family experienced a death or during the Hara Raya Puasa, when Muslims needed extra income to visit the place of their birth-the PCP would “turn a blind eye” and understand that some poaching would occur in the following days.

The Pawikan Conservation Project of the Turtle Islands created a system of resource management that allowed residents to sell some of the island’s valuable turtle eggs, considered a delicacy, while conserving a sufficient amount to build the turtle population.

NOTES

1. For example, see the best practice compendia maintained by the United Nations Environment Programme (http://www.unep.org/bsgn, accessed 28 September 2007) and IUCN-The World Conservation Union (IUCN, http://www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/pubs/guidelines.htm, accessed 28 September 2007).

2. F. Berkes, “Community-based Conservation in a Globalized World,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007 (forthcoming).

3. There are, by now, many excellent accounts of how this process of diffusion works. See D. Strang and S. A. Soule, “Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 265-90 for a discussion of diffusion in organizational settings; and A. Florini, “The Evolution of International Norms,” International Studies Quarterly 40 (1996): 363-389 on how international norms evolve.

4. Berkes, note 2 above, for example.

5. K. Brandon, K. Redford, and S. Sanderson, Parks in Peril: People, Politics, and Protected Areas (Covelo, California: Island Press, 1998).

6. T. Agardy et al., “Dangerous Targets? Unresolved Issues and Ideological Clashes Around Marine Protected Areas,” Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 13 (2003): 353-67.

7. The most immediately relevant publications include E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); E. Ostrom, J. Burger, C. B. Field, R. B. Norgaard, D. Policansky, “Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges,” Science 284, no. 5412 (9 April 1999), 278-282; and E. Ostrom, R. Gardner, and J. Walker, Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

8. Ostrom, ibid.

9. Cesar Allen Vera, project manager, Community Based Natural Resources Management Learning Center, in conversations with the authors, 25 July and 8 October 2007.

10. A. R. Poteete and E. Ostrom, “Heterogeneity, Group Size and Collective Action: The Role of Institutions in Forest Management,” Development and Change 35, no. 3 (2004): 435-61; and E. Ostrom, “Scales, Polycentricity, and Incentives: Designing Complexity to Govern Complexity,” in L. D. Guruswamy and J. A. McNeely, eds., Protection of Global Biodiversity: Converging Strategies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 149-67.

11. As an example of this emergent literature, see F. Berkes, J. Colding, and C. Folke, Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003) for an attempt to make the scientific case for adaptive management.

12. IUCN, IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals (Switzerland: IUCN, 1990).

13. For instance, the resident is allotted a day, or series of days, during which they are allowed to harvest eggs that they can sell to a middleman for some income. The middleman then sells the eggs in the local market in Sandakan, Malaysia, for a profit.

14. J. Domantay, “The Turtle Fisheries in Turtle Islands,” Bulletin of the Fisheries Society of the Philippines 3-4 (1953): 3- 27.

15. The PCP admired the skills of the elderly egg probers, and some asked to be trained in their practices. The following is an excerpt from the field notes of one of the PCP members:

Some local residents have devised methods to locate the eggs in the green turtle nest despite such concealment . . . . On a typical early morning, Pa I. (alternating with Pa S.) treks Baguan’s beach, searching for traces of sea turtle activity the night before . . . . However, the exact location of the eggs and the depth that these are buried cannot be determined without additional information. To ascertain the location of the egg chamber, Pa I. and Pa S. use a metal egg probe . . . . Pa I. and Pa S. use the egg probe very sparingly . . . . For most nests, they have achieved a skill level that enables them to “perceive” where the egg chamber is located even without resorting to the egg probe . . . . During my early fieldwork, Pa I. and I would test each other . . . . Invariably, Pa I. would be correct. (D. Torres, unpublished field notes, 2007.)

16. R. Cruz, “Marine Turtle Distribution and Mortality in the Philippines,” in I. Kinan, Proceedings of the Western Pacific Sea Turtle Cooperative Research and Managmenet Workshop, 5-8 February 2002, Honolulu (Honolulu: Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council).

17. Municipality of the Turtle Islands, Resolution of the Municipal Government (Tawi-Tawi: City Council, 2002).

18. S. Musilim, Minutes of the Regular Session of the Sangguniang Bayan of Turtle Islands (Tawi-Tawi: Turtle Islands Mayor’s Office, 2003).

19. R. Lejano, H. Ingram, J. Whiteley, D. Torres, and S. Agduma, “The Importance of Context: Integrating Resource Conservation with Local Institutions” Society & Natural Resources 20 (2007): 1-9.

20. R. Lejano, “The Phenomenon of Collective Action: Modeling Institutions as Structures of Care,” Public Administration Review, accepted for publication, 2007.

21. Ostrom, note 7 above.

22. E. H. Chan and H. C. Liew, A Management Plan for the Green and Hawksbill Turtle Populations of the Sabah Turtle Islands (Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia: Universiti Pertanian Malaysia).

23. See, for example, Berkes, note 2 above.

24. This includes the commons model in Ostrom, note 7 above, in which repeated interactions teach the individual that cooperation is individually rational in the long run.

25. See L. Fraser and H. Ingram, “Path Dependency and Adroit Innovation: The Case of California Water,” in F. Baumgartner, ed., By Fits and Starts: The Dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

Raul P. Lejano is an associate professor in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. His research and teaching address new models for policy analysis and evolving institutional designs for environmental management. He is the author of Frameworks for Policy Analysis: Merging Text and Context (Routledge Press). He may be contacted at rplejano@yahoo.com.

Helen Ingram is professor emeritus in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, and a research fellow at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona. She has published much in the fields of water policy and policy studies. Among her environmentrelated books are Reflections on Water: New Approaches to Transboundary Conflicts (MIT Press, edited with J. Blatter) and the forthcoming volume Water, Place and Equity (MIT Press, edited with J. Whiteley and R. Perry). She may be contacted at hingram@uci.edu.

RAUL P. LEJANO (“Place-Based Conservation: Lessons from the Turtle Islands,” page 18) is an associate professor in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Frameworks for Policy Analysis: Merging Text and Context (Routledge Press). His research and teaching address new models for policy analysis and institutional designs for environmental management. HELEN INGRAM is professor emeritus in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, and a research fellow at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona. She has published widely in the fields of water policy and policy studies.

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