Bora-Bora

Today, coral reefs are one of the focal points of conservation efforts globally, along with tropical forests and the north and south poles. In Pacific Islands, the management of fish resources was often community-based, and access and use were governed through cultural norms, local history, and political expedience. But, over the past five decades, many Pacific Islands (including French Polynesia) have transitioned from relying on subsistence agriculture and fishing to emerging economies that rely primarily on tourism. This is the case of Bora-Bora (French Polynesia Island), a major international tourist destination, famous for its aqua-centric luxury resorts. In 2018, a meeting organized by the Bora-Bora Mayor was held with CRIOBE and IVMNBB (environmental and social association). The objective was set up a research program to acquire knowledge on the state of reef health and propose sustainable management measures (2019/2022). Following the results and recommendations of this previous project, we have written the present ANR “Bora-Bora” proposal to know how citizens want to manage the south-west reef at Bora-Bora where there are many conflicts of use between the different local stakeholders (environmental associations, nautical providers, scuba-diving clubs, professional and amateur fishermen). Our present proposal is therefore born with and for citizens to promote participatory monitoring (community-based participatory research) in order to determine the best way to manage reef fish resources of Bora-Bora. To achieve such a challenge and propose a conservation plan of the reefs accepted by all (or at least a large part of the population), our project will federate many stakeholders of Bora-Bora (fishers, resource users, community residents and local managers) around shared principles by creating a charter of participative sciences based on co-production and co-learning; by creating new spaces of exchange (Fab-Lab); and by associating school audiences. Thus, our project is articulated around three work-packages: To expose the citizens of Bora-Bora to participative research by introducing the themes of coral reef fragility, diminution of fish stocks, and lessons learnt from COVID-19 (WP1); To collect data by carrying out various participative monitoring on marine biodiversity, rahui effect, reef uses by the citizens (WP2); and lastly to create dialogue between all local stakeholders in order to find some management scenarios of fish stocks and to propose it/them to the municipal council (WP3). Overall, citizens must inform scientists, managers, and politicians about their preferred scenario at Bora-Bora: more economic development or more reef conservation. Whichever scenario that citizens will chose to preserve their reef, we believe that we are living through a unique moment (after these two years of social and economic crises) at which fundamental change in the relationship between nature and society is possible.