sjtg_385 55..69

Managing Ontong Java: Social institutions forproduction and governance of atoll resources

in Solomon Islands

Tim Bayliss-Smith1, Katherine V. Gough2, Andreas Egelund Christensen2 andSøren Pilgaard Kristensen2

1Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK2Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Correspondence: Tim Bayliss-Smith (email: tpb1001@cam.ac.uk)

This paper explores the changing nature of social institutions and organizations for resource

management on Ontong Java and their central role in maintaining livelihoods. Using detailed

field data for three time periods, 1970–72, 1986 and 2006–07, and drawing on earlier secondary

data, a longitudinal analysis of changes in governance and livelihoods is undertaken. Increased

exploitation of marine resources has widened the resource base and increased people’s access to

goods and services. Following the ban in 2005 on the bêche-de-mer trade, however, livelihoods

have reverted to being more subsistence oriented. For almost two decades after 1978, a com-

munal organization, the Area Council, succeeded in regulating exploitation of the atoll’s marine

resources to ensure sustainable use, but in the 1990s it collapsed. In addition there was a

paralysis of institutions that had once settled land disputes. This failure of atoll governance is a

greater threat to future ‘sustainability’ than the usual processes that are invoked for atolls and

small islands generally. As the Solomon Islands state is also failing, we argue that local institu-

tions and organizations have a vital role to play in managing access to resources and the future

of livelihoods on Ontong Java atoll.

Keywords: atoll, bêche-de-mer, governance, livelihoods, Ontong Java, Solomon Islands

Introduction

Most mainstream writings and media reports about atoll livelihoods are heavily influ-enced by development narratives, which can be defined as ‘ “stories” about the worldwhich frame problems in particular ways and in turn suggest particular solutions’(Leach et al., 1999: 229). Typically such writings emphasize the difficulties, crises andrisks of atoll life. Difficulties are those associated with the atoll’s miniscule land area,restricted range of plants and extreme geographical isolation; crises are constituted asthe endemic state of atoll societies because ‘limits to growth’ are quickly reached andpopulation pressures threaten to generate Malthusian scenarios; and the risks, assumedto be the norm for atolls, are those posed by the dangers of droughts, hurricanes and thethreat of sea-level rise from global warming. It is, therefore, difficult to approach thesubject of atoll livelihoods without framing observations, interpretations and policyrecommendations in ways that do not confirm the effects of environmental determin-ism, Malthusian processes, and/or doomsday futures.

While not being complacent about the distinctive challenges posed by the atollenvironment, our own data spanning nearly 40 years for Ontong Java atoll, northernSolomon Islands suggest very different emphases. Over this period we would charac-terize the atoll environment as ‘rich’ not ‘poor’, particularly since 1972 when increasingwealth from marine resources greatly widened the resource base and improved people’saccess to goods and services. Both wealth and out-migration have kept at bay the

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2010.00385.x

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 31 (2010) 55–69

© 2010 The Authors

Journal compilation © 2010 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Malthusian spectre, while natural hazards have not been a serious problem for the last40 years. Global environmental change is a concern but not yet a threat.

In this paper we focus on the changing social institutions for resource managementon Ontong Java and their central role in maintaining livelihoods. We examine the riseand fall in indigenous attempts to preserve the atoll’s endowment through measures topromote the sustainability of its key marine species. This failure of atoll governance is agreater threat to future ‘sustainability’ than any of the usual processes generally invokedfor atolls and small islands. Unless new local institutions can emerge that are able tochallenge the ‘hidden hand’ of unregulated capitalism, the future outlook for atolls isbleak.

Our discussions are influenced by the distinctions made by Ellis (2000) betweenorganizations, institutions and social relations. Organizations are groups that are boundby specified purposes in order to achieve certain objectives, including associations,nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government and private agencies. Institutionsinclude both formal rules and conventions, such as laws and property rights, as well asinformal codes of behaviour. Social relations cover gender, class, caste, ethnicity, religionand age. Our paper aims to track the impacts of social relations, institutions andorganizations on atoll livelihoods, using as primary evidence detailed surveys that wecarried out in 1970–72, 1986 and 2006–07.

Setting the scene

Atoll land useOntong Java is situated 250 km north of Santa Isabel in Solomon Islands, and is thelargest of the Polynesian outlier atolls. More than 100 islands enclose a vast lagoon thatextends for 70 km from Luaniua in the southeast to Pelau in the north (Figure 1). The

LUANGIUA

KEHANGO

KEPAE

KEMALUKEILAKELOMA

PELAU

AVAHA

Lopaha

KekeleNgikolo

Akoo

Peiaku

Legend

Division between Luangiuaand Pelau ownership of reefs

S O U T H

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

0 10 20 km155

N

Figure 1. Ontong Java atoll.

56 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

atoll’s two largest islands, Luaniua and Pelau, form the basis for two communities thatclosely resemble each other but operate as separate societies, once distinct and broughttogether only in recent decades to create a unified system of atoll governance. The totalpopulation declined from 2000 people around 1900 to 588 in 1939, but since malariaeradication in the late 1960s there has been a demographic recovery (Bayliss-Smith,1975; 2006). The resident population in 2006 numbered about 1800 people withanother 700 people of Ontong Java origin living away from the atoll, mostly in LordHowe settlement in Honiara.

Using 1962–63 air photos and 1970–71 ground mapping, Bayliss-Smith (1974: 57–8)estimated the total vegetated area to be 778 ha with only 29 ha of the original Pisoniaforest remaining. Most of the forest had been converted to coconut plantation (651 ha).There were also freshwater swamps, mostly artificially excavated, totalling 57 ha ofwhich about 39 ha were cultivated for either taro Colocasia esculenta or the giant swamptaro Cyrtosperma merkusii. Intensive taro cultivation declined in the twentieth century astrade provided people with alternative sources of carbohydrate in their diet. A perma-nent trading station for buying copra was established as early as 1895 by German traders(Anonymous, 1895) and until 1942 German, Swedish, British or Australian traderswere in continuous residence. In the 1940s the atoll was almost cut off from the marketeconomy, and after 1952 the role of resident trader was replaced by the regular visits oftrading ships from Honiara or Gizo, in Western Province. The effect of the copra tradewas the replacement of natural vegetation by coconuts, and by the 1960s the atoll’sresource base was transformed (Bayliss-Smith & Christensen, 2008).

Atoll societyHogbin (1931; 1934) identified four main social organizations for managing atollresources – the fishing group, the garden owning group, the joint family and the houseowning group – each constituted according to different social rules (Table 1). Theall-male fishing group consisted of a set of brothers and their sons who jointly owned a

Table 1. Overview of main social organizations in Ontong Java identified in 1928 by Hogbin

(1931) and their status in 2007.

Social organization Members and purpose c. 1928 Status 2007

Fishing group Set of brothers and their sons.Canoes jointly owned and the catchwas shared equally.

Bêche-de-mer activities caused theunit of production and consumptionto change to, in some cases, thenuclear family.

Garden owning group Related women, led by the oldestfemale. The produce was sharedequally.

Importance revived after boom yearsof bêche-de-mer were over.Increasing conflicts and disputesover garden access and fooddistribution.

Joint family A larger lineage or clan-based groupof men and women. Became theland owning group that organizedcopra production.

Social unit unchanged. Copraneglected during bêche-de-merboom, but production slowlyreviving despite generally low prices.

House owning group Mother and her children owning thehouses in the village on land ownedby joint family groups. Typicallymore than one family lived in thegroup’s house and maintained it.

Remarkably little investment toreduce women’s labour in housebuilding and maintenance.Increasing land disputes in congestedvillages. Some families have movedto land outside the built-up village.

Governance of atoll resources 57

canoe and fishing tackle, fished together, pooled the catch and divided it amongthemselves. The female garden owning group, a set of related women led by the oldestfemale and connected to her in the female line, owned the taro gardens that theycultivated, and again the produce was shared equally. The joint family, a larger lineageor clan (today often glossed by the people as ‘tribe’), consisted of men and women whotraced descent through males from a common ancestor. In 1971 there were 40 jointfamilies in Luaniua (Bayliss-Smith, 1986). These groups owned land (except tarogardens) on islands or parts of islands where members spent part of the year managingthe resources, particularly coconuts following the rise of the copra trade. A minority –termed ‘poor joint families’ by Hogbin (1934) – did not own land outside the mainvillages and usually stayed in the main villages for the whole year.

The land in the main villages was divided into strips that also belonged to jointfamilies, but the houses located there belonged to a different social grouping, the houseowning group. This consisted of a mother and her children, and they cooperated withhouse maintenance. Because a married man lives in his wife’s mother’s house, thehousehold (those who eat and sleep under one roof) is somewhat differently constitutedfrom the house owning group.

A fifth organization was the rest-house, a grouping of men constituted according totheir place of residence within the village rather than through kinship, although a sonnormally joins the rest-house of his father. Today there are five rest-houses in Luaniuaand four in Pelau, all of them located along the lagoon beach. These were onceimportant places for the transfer of fishing skills and knowledge including how to makefishing nets, paddles, axe handles and canoes. Rest-houses also served as a place wheremen met to talk and to drink kaleve (fermented coconut sap). Today many old skills areno longer practised and this organization is mainly a social forum where news from thevillage and beyond is passed on. But the rest-house remains a centre for organizingevents such as sports competitions and parties, and it provides representatives to sit onvarious committees in the wider community.

Hogbin (1934) emphasized the complex web of kinship links and obligationsthat connects every person to many others, with marriage widening this networkstill further. It is a social structure that ensures a flow of subsistence resourcesinto each household from a variety of groupings, none of them identical to the house-hold itself. In this way land, labour and production are divided and shared, and noone is excluded from entitlement. Sahlins (1958) argued that this complex and over-lapping set of resource rights reflected an adaptation to recurrent crises (hurricanes,famines) in resource availability and the difficulty on atolls of accumulating surplusproduction on any substantial scale. It resulted in an egalitarian society in whicheveryone had entitlement to basic subsistence resources. We ask in this paper if thismodel of overlapping and interlocking social relations and broadly egalitarian insti-tutions is still applicable to Ontong Java. How far have the social relations that bindthe various kin-based organizations adapted to the new opportunities offered bytrade?

Research methodsOne of us, Tim Bayliss-Smith, carried out fieldwork from June 1970 to May 1971 andfrom June to August 1972. The intention was to quantify relationships to environmen-tal resources by means of sample surveys of time use and more systematic surveys ofland use. Imports and exports to the atoll were also monitored by recording the amountof copra and trochus shell carried on the 10 commercial ships that visited the atoll

58 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

during a 12-month period and the imported goods that arrived, and these surveys wereupdated in May to June 1986 (Bayliss-Smith, 1974; 1986; 1990; 2006).

A more updated knowledge of Ontong Java livelihoods was obtained from renewedfieldwork by the remaining three of us, Andreas Egelund Christensen, Katherine Goughand Søren Pilgaard Kristensen, in 2006–07. A team of seven Danish researchers wasassisted by three graduates from the University of the South Pacific (all Ontong Javans)and seven local assistants recruited on Ontong Java. Much of the fieldwork was con-ducted in December 2006, a time when many people had returned to Luaniua or Pelaufor Christmas. Ninety questionnaires were conducted with a random sample of house-holds, 60 in Luaniua and 30 in Pelau reflecting their relative populations. A total of 15focus group discussions were held with the chiefs and elders, women’s groups, youthgroups and mixed groups to explore the history, customs, livelihoods, mobility, garden-ing, soils and climate of Ontong Java. In-depth interviews were held with around 30individuals to trace their life histories, focussing in particular on changes in theirlivelihoods.

The paper draws in particular on the qualitative data collected. Interviews with keyactors have enabled us to reconstruct events before and in-between the surveys. For alonger-term perspective we also refer to earlier fieldwork in 1889, 1910 and 1928 byethnologists and anthropologists (Parkinson, 1889; Sarfert & Damm, 1929; Hogbin,1930; 1931; 1934).

Changes in atoll governance

In Solomon Islands the peak of state legitimacy for small island communities likeOntong Java was probably the late colonial period and the following decade, circa1970–1990. In the 1990s, many of the administrative arrangements established by thecolonial state and expanded after independence became under-resourced, lost theirlegitimacy or were even abolished. From 1999 to 2003 Solomon Islands was effectivelya failed state, with trade as well as administration severely disrupted (Fraenkel, 2004;Moore, 2004). In these circumstances communities were forced to improvise their owngovernance organizations, often reviving in a new guise old institutions such as chiefs,elders and customary laws. Here we outline the rise of ‘kings’ in the nineteenth centurybefore tracing the rise and fall of the formal organizations (‘councils’) that were formedin the mid-twentieth century.

The rise of ‘kings’During the nineteenth century there was an increased need for Ontong Javans to dealwith outside parties, especially in relation to trade. Sahlins (1958) has suggested thattraders seeking commodities, visiting blackbirders and other violent or traumatic inci-dents are likely to have been catalysts for political change. The response to perceivedthreats from the outside was organized resistance and the formation of a more stratifiedsociety. In both Luaniua and Pelau, new and more powerful paramount chiefs emergedcalled he ku`u – termed ‘kings’ by Hogbin (1934) – as well as new and more powerfulspiritual leaders, maakua.

The he ku`u of Luaniua and Pelau represented a system of atoll governance that atfirst was acceptable to the colonial authorities, German and later British. The autocraticKing Uila ruled Luaniua from about 1878 until 1905, and it was he who confronted theinitial challenges posed by the arrival of resident copra traders and colonial rule. Uilatold Parkinson (1889) that the resident traders were causing food shortages by buying

Governance of atoll resources 59

up all the coconuts in the form of copra. In response Uila encouraged the planting ofwhole islands with coconuts (Hogbin, 1930), and he initiated the subdivision among allmarried women of the coconut plantations on what had once been common land onislands north of Luaniua (Hogbin, 1931; 1934). This land became property that subse-quently was inherited from mother to daughter, so that in 1928 some women were ableto supply their families with coconuts without being dependent on their husbands orsons (Hogbin, 1934).

Customary land tenure, therefore, was already changing when in 1915 the firstformal change in atoll governance was imposed from the outside. In that year Uila’ssuccessor Ke`aepea became old, and a dispute arose about the chiefly succession. Thedistrict officer (DO) decided to bypass the two disputing factions and chose instead athird compromise candidate, Mekaike, who was accepted as chief and in 1921 wasdeclared headman by the colonial officials. In 1936 this position was filled by his cousinand in 1940 by his son Aisa. On both occasions other claimants disputed the successionand the final decision was made by the visiting DO (Marchant, 1940). Meanwhile allexternal relations remained under the control of a company based in Tulagi (then thecapital of the Solomons) that supplied trade stores and employed the resident traders.

After the Pacific war a political ‘wind of change’ began to blow through the BritishSolomon Islands Protectorate. In 1952 the DO encouraged the chiefs to consult with theheads of the main lineages before making decisions: ‘the underlying idea was to changethe chief from the old position of paramountcy . . . to one of a “chief in council” . . . andalso perhaps to lay the foundations of a possible Native Council’ (Davidson, 1952).However, it was not until 1965 that Aisa, then an old man, was persuaded to abdicatehis powers as headman in favour of the newly established Luaniua Local GovernmentCouncil. When Aisa died two years later, his position as chief was inherited by hisbrother Patrick Keopo. Meanwhile, the Luaniua Council was being promoted by centralgovernment as the only legitimate focus of political power. Parallel changes took placeat Pelau.

Local government councilsLocal government councils were organizations imposed on local communitiesthroughout Solomon Islands, indeed throughout large swathes of the British Empire.Despite central government support, initially the Luaniua and Pelau councils werepoorly led and lacked legitimacy from tradition; and particularly at Luaniua the chiefretained authority and respect. However, the main opposition to the Luaniua Councilat this time was the Anglican church under its charismatic leader Caspar Kakaihe,who saw the Council president as a political rival and council taxes as a challenge tothe tithes that he himself levied to cover church expenses. By 1970–72 the LuaniuaCouncil employed an efficient secretary and was under the leadership of a strong andwell-educated president. The Council exerted increasing power over matters rangingfrom beer licences to women’s tattooing, permitted times for men’s drinking of kaleve,bans on pet dogs, how much visiting tourist yachts should be charged, and even themaximum level of dowry.

Another imposed colonial organization, the native court, was never so successfulespecially in relation to land disputes. In a society where almost everyone has kinship-based interests it proved difficult to find persons to serve whose judgement could betrusted. By the 1980s, several land disputes remained unresolved following sustainedpopulation growth and an attempt by some joint family group elders to restrict access forcopra-making to close kin. Moreover there was an increasing tendency not to respect

60 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

the judgements of the High Court in Honiara when cases were passed on to that levelof governance. Neither the old (local) nor the new (national) organizations had suffi-cient legitimacy, and government officials of independent Solomon Islands showed anincreasing reluctance to intervene in Ontong Java affairs. Could a unified Ontong JavaArea Council rise to these challenges and avoid a breakdown in the rule of law?

Rise and fall of the Ontong Java Area CouncilIn the very last years of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, DOs finally succeededin their long-term objective of creating a united Area Council for the whole of OntongJava. Quicker transport around the atoll, new wealth from bêche-de-mer (sea cucum-ber) exports and feelings of insecurity prior to Solomon Islands independence in 1978no doubt helped Luaniua and Pelau to set aside old differences and construct a unifiedsystem of atoll governance.

One of the first acts of the new Area Council was to respond to growing evidencethat stocks of bêche-de-mer were being overexploited. To allow for recovery, both 1978and 1979 were declared ‘closed seasons’ for bêche-de-mer, and the result was a returnto copra making. After five years of neglect of the coconut plantations, more than 500tonnes of copra were exported in 1979. In January 1980, when fishermen were allowedto resume diving for bêche-de-mer, they were delighted at the large number available(Bayliss-Smith, 1986).

The Area Council had thus established an indigenous system for ‘sustainable use’.The ‘open’ and ‘closed season’ regulations continued: odd-numbered years (1981, 1983,1985) were closed seasons for bêche-de-mer and trochus shell, while even-numberedyears (1980, 1982, 1984, 1986) were open seasons. Copra compensated for the loss ofearnings from bêche-de-mer during closed seasons, and in 1985 copra exports from theatoll reached a record level of over 700 tonnes.

The regulations extended also to technology. Proposals by certain individuals to usescuba equipment to exploit bêche-de-mer in deeper water were rejected. The systemwas frustrating to ambitious young men but was popular in families without boats ordivers and so lacking direct access to new wealth. By comparison copra making wasaccessible to all ages and both sexes, but it also depended on transport being availableto and from islands and required cooperative work within the joint family. Transportand cooperation were both disrupted in bêche-de-mer open years as men abandonedtheir joint families to work in their fishing groups where there were higher earnings andmuch less pressure to share the money.

Falling copra prices resulted in the Area Council declaring 1987 and 1988 both openyears for bêche-de-mer. However, 1989, 1991 and 1993 were all closed years. After1993 a further crisis for copra, plus growing demands for more liberal policies, resultedin there being no more ‘closed’ years, although the by-laws which made closure possibleremained in force. What finally destroyed this governance system was not low copraprices or pressures from the people but rather the Solomon Islands government itself. Asthe state became more and more dependent on revenues from exporting rainforest logsto the booming ‘Asian Tiger’ markets, there was growing corruption and a paralysis inthe public service. Most state expenditure was devoted to projects and people living inHoniara, while the provincial governments were starved of resources (Hviding &Bayliss-Smith, 2000). Meanwhile Area Councils increasingly were seeking to resist thelogging deals that were being set up in Honiara with Southeast Asian companies.Consequently, by the 1990s the value of Area Councils was being questioned by PrimeMinister Mamaloni and in 1996 Parliament abolished them, transferring their powers to

Governance of atoll resources 61

provincial governments and local ‘chiefs’. At a stroke the legitimacy of Area Coun-cils was undercut, and the stage was set for a revival of more ‘traditional’ forms ofgovernance.

On Ontong Java the revival of chiefs came 65 years after the DO had intervened toappoint Mekaike the official headman at Luaniua. However, by the 1990s the chiefswere much less powerful than their nineteenth-century predecessors, and they alsofaced a transformed society and economy. As law and order broke down in Honiara andthe Solomon Islands state collapsed during the years of ethnic tension in 1999–2003,many long-term migrants returned to Ontong Java to try to make a living from theresources of the atoll. Soon the conservation policies initiated by the Area Council werebeing actively challenged.

The house of chiefsSince the 1996 Area Assemblies Act each local community in Solomon Islands has beenexpected to invent its own arrangements for governance and, in this process, OntongJava has split once again into its two historic communities, Luaniua and Pelau. In eachcommunity the role of settling land disputes has been taken over from the failing nativecourt by a house of chiefs. In 2006 the chiefs listed their other roles as includingresponsibility for controlling access to the gardens (once the headman’s job), regulatingmarine resources such as diving for bêche-de-mer and trochus, and seeing to the generalwellbeing of their respective communities. They also agree on by-laws covering issueslike permitted times for drinking and playing music. Each house of chiefs contains 14members, including the paramount chief who nominates 6 heads of joint families asmembers. In Luaniua a major weakness of the house of chiefs is the coexistence of twoparamount chiefs, one tracing direct descent from King Uila and the other descent fromMekaiake, the compromise headman appointed by the British. This schism has resultedin a lack of clarity regarding their respective roles and responsibilities. Opinions divergeon many issues including how best to manage marine resources, especially bêche-de-mer. The result is a crisis of legitimacy as both chiefs strive to maintain their credibilityamong the populace.

By eliminating a formal organization of governance (the Ontong Java Area Council),the state has created conditions for local politics to be dominated mainly by men actingin rather unstructured ways. An example is the Luaniua ‘Project Committee’, laterrenamed the ‘Resource Management Planning Committee’ (RMPC). The committee’smain responsibility is development projects, but unlike the Area Council with its annualhead tax on adults and its income from licences granted for stores and bakeries, theRMPC lacks any formal means to raise money. Consequently it remains largely ineffec-tive, and was especially so during the ‘failed state’ years of 1999–2003 when support orsubsidy from the outside was unavailable.

In January 2006, after a major storm during which taro gardens were flooded, theRMPC evolved into the so-called ‘Interim Committee’. Its remit was to look intothe food shortages that arose as a result of the storm surge through assessment of thedamage to taro gardens and a survey of all the residents of Luaniua and Pelau conductedthrough the rest-houses. In March 2006 its report was sent to the (now functioning)Solomon Islands government, and relief (20 kg rice per household member) arrived inAugust 2006. When interviewed, the chairman of the Interim Committee stated that itsrole was to look after the interests of the community and to engage in dialogue with anyagency that might want to establish a project, whereas the role of the house of chiefswas to focus on land matters and disputes. This example highlights the flexible response

62 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

of new institutions on the atoll, as opportunities appear for positive engagement withthe state. In the next section we turn to look at the changing role of those organizationsand social relations that govern livelihoods.

Organizations for production

In parallel with the rise and fall of the organizations for atoll governance we can tracesome changes in those that organize production (see Table 1). We review this under theheadings of joint families, gardening groups and fishing groups. These three traditionalorganizations all show more change than the house owning groups, perhaps becausemethods of house construction have changed little and women still do most of the hardwork of collecting pandanus leaves, thatching and weaving wall panels. Despite thou-sands of dollars having been invested by men in marine activities, house buildingremains largely traditional.

Joint family activitiesCopra derives from coconuts growing on land owned by the joint family, and it providedthe main income source before the rise of bêche-de-mer. Production today is stillmanaged through the joint family group (‘tribe’), and families within each group taketurns to exploit coconut stands for copra production, often having user rights toparticular islands for several consecutive years. Once the closed seasons on bêche-de-mer harvesting were abandoned in the 1990s copra production halted, but after thenational ban on bêche-de-mer in 2005 several families returned to this commodity. Dueto neglect of the land planted with coconut trees, much of 2006 was spent clearing bushin preparation for copra production.

Following the exodus of most Chinese from Solomon Islands in 2006 when riotingand arson destroyed Chinatown in Honiara, copra is bought up by Solomon Islandertraders, most of them Ontong Javans based in Honiara, who sell it to the Copra Boardfor shipment to European markets. One such man said he was encouraging people onthe atoll to produce copra again and had already purchased nearly 4 tonnes in 2006. Heestimated that half of the families in Luaniua had restarted production, but many lackedpetrol to travel to the islands of their joint families for copra making so he was providingpetrol on credit. One typical family produced 19 bags (almost 2 tonnes) of copra in 3–4weeks, in 2006 worth about SBD 1800 (USD 260). The earnings from copra are morewidely distributed than those from bêche-de-mer, but it would be wrong to assume thatthe money is equally shared – especially between men and women. After marriage awoman travels for copra making to the island that belongs to the joint family of herhusband. She lives there with people to whom she is unrelated except through mar-riage. Thus the political role of women is weak within the joint family, and women aredependent on their husbands for a share of the cash incomes gained from selling copra.

Gardening group activitiesBefore the market economy allowed imports to Ontong Java of rice, flour, biscuits andsugar, two species of aroids (taro) were the staple carbohydrate food. The slow-growinggiant taro Cyrtosperma merkusii occupied about 95 per cent of the swamp area, while taroColocasia esculenta was cultivated in the remaining 5 per cent. The two crops contributedabout 29 per cent of all dietary energy in 1970–71, and about 18 per cent in 1986(Bayliss-Smith, 1986). Their role in the diet declined steadily during the boom years ofbêche-de-mer when imported foods were increasingly consumed.

Governance of atoll resources 63

Following the ban on bêche-de-mer harvesting in 2005 many families reverted totaro production as their main food source, returning to the main villages from outlyingislands and reclaiming their rights to gardens. In 2006 giant swamp taro Cyrtospermamerkusii was being consumed on a daily basis by most households but the more favouredtaro Colocasia esculenta was reserved for ritual occasions. Interpretation of a satelliteimage from April 2006 indicates that the total area and location of the gardens has notchanged from 40 years ago. All gardens are located in artificial depressions at a distanceof 1–2 km from the main villages, and only 5 per cent (about 40 ha in total) of the landarea can be used for aroid cultivation.

Taro production is still controlled by women working in groups linked by kinship,each group cultivating about 5–10 gardens under the supervision of the oldest woman.Men occasionally participate in connection with activities such as clearing and harvest-ing. To prevent stealing, garden work is only permitted on certain days, a regulatorypractice taken over from the chiefs by the Ontong Java Area Council and todayperformed by the house of chiefs. Garden work was only allowed on two specificweekdays, but in early 2006, following the ban on bêche-de-mer and a major storm thatcaused extensive flooding and damage to many of the gardens, garden work wasallowed on every weekday. There was an increase in conflicts over gardens and cropaccess between returnees and those who had never left the main communities.However, differences between families in their access to gardens are not substantial, andwith extensive food sharing (taro, fish, coconuts) between related persons, a subsistencelivelihood for poor households is still assured.

Fishing group activitiesThe fishing group was always important to atoll nutrition, but its wider social andeconomic role has increased in the age of bêche-de-mer. Fishing itself was and stillremains a male activity that takes place in both lagoon and ocean from canoes, by freediving, or from the shore. Many different techniques are used ranging from traditionalmethods using stones, lines and homemade hooks with bait, to modern lures andoutboard engines for trolling. Men may go out to sea alone, fish in groups of two to four,or cooperate in larger groups depending on the methods and target species. As fish areregarded as an open access resource, there is no control on where and how people fish,or the amount they catch. The resource seems abundant but preservation is problematic,so families do not catch more fish than they can immediately consume or distributeamong relatives or neighbours. The importance of locally caught fish has varied. From1973 until 2005 increasing wealth from bêche-de-mer led to more canned tuna andmackerel being eaten, but after the national ban on bêche-de-mer in 2005 fishing onceagain became a daily activity.

Young boys develop their fishing skills by acting as assistants both ashore and at sea.Since the mid-1970s the harvesting of bêche-de-mer has been the main source of cashincome for the people of Ontong Java (Crean, 1977). The trade dates back to thenineteenth century and was revived in the 1930s by visiting Japanese ships, but therelationship ended with the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. In 1972 a Chinesebusinessman based in Honiara sent a trading ship to the atoll, and the Luaniua Councilpresident agreed to act as his local agent. The people’s earlier experience with theJapanese meant that previously learnt skills could be reintroduced by the older genera-tions. At that time outrigger sailing canoes were in general use (Bayliss-Smith, 1978),and it was inevitable that bêche-de-mer harvesting became a new branch of thetraditional activities of fishing groups.

64 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

As with fishing where women do the work of cleaning and cooking the catch,bêche-de-mer production involves all members of the household unit. The men typi-cally do the actual diving while young boys stay on the surface looking after the canoes.The processing work – i.e. cleaning, boiling, drying – is a women’s activity but thepacking, weighing, sorting and selling is by men and, as with copra, it is men whodetermine how the money should be divided. By the mid-1980s large incomes, by localstandards, were gained from bêche-de-mer, reaching as much as SBD 1000–3000 perhousehold per month but with much interhousehold variation depending on transportand manpower resources. Of this gross income, a high proportion was spent on fibre-glass canoes, outboard engines and petrol (Bayliss-Smith, 1986).

After the Area Council was abolished and the house of chiefs took over, there wastalk of maintaining the old policy of alternate years being open or closed for bêche-de-mer harvesting, once copra prices had recovered. In 2000, however, a new technique forharvesting bêche-de-mer was developed by certain local men. This method uses a formof trawling net and is less labour intensive than free diving methods but needs largefibreglass canoes, outboard engines and petrol. With the house of chiefs lacking fulllegitimacy, in part because of conflicts of interest between chiefs and their sons, rulesabout permitted methods were soon ignored. Ambitious young men knew that they ranno risk of legal sanctions. As a result, bêche-de-mer was intensively harvested onOntong Java for five years in succession from 2000–2005. There was a correspondingdramatic increase in the numbers harvested and the depths at which they were caught,and in new species being collected. As a result of this intensified harvest at a time ofrising prices, average household incomes increased dramatically. By 2005 some house-holds could earn SBD10 000 (USD 1400) per month, a previously unknown amount ofmoney for those living on the atoll. As well as spending much of the money on fibreglasscanoes and outboard engines, solar panels and imported food were bought, and chil-dren’s education and trips to Honiara were paid for. There was a corresponding moveaway from subsistence production.

The social relations of the groups engaged in bêche-de-mer harvesting also began tochange. Whereas previously bêche-de-mer had been organized through kinship-basedfishing groups, increasingly it was based more on the household. The capital-intensivenature of production, the involvement of women in the processing, and large profitsmeant that sharing arrangements among a wider group of brothers, sons and nephewssometimes became problematic. Some individuals dived alone, at other times they divedin a kinship-based group, or they dived with friends and divided the catch among theparticipants. Thus, the nature of the social groups involved in bêche-de-mer productionbecame more fluid.

In August 2005 an unpublished consultant’s report commissioned by the SolomonIslands Government revealed that the harvesting of bêche-de-mer was unsustainable,and a total export ban on all species was imposed (Foale, 2006). Overnight the wholebasis for the income of Ontong Javans was eliminated and only a few households couldstill afford to buy the goods to which they had become accustomed. The rhythm of dailylife and diet was transformed, and many found themselves in debt to local businessmenhaving previously bought goods on credit.

Stores and canteens: towards new institutions

Before 1942 imports were only available from the resident Europeans traders whobartered goods for copra. The first local ‘stores’ were set up in the 1950s and were

Governance of atoll resources 65

supplied by the visiting trader Tom Elkington, who preferred to deal with a smallnumber of customers and so offered a discount on bulk orders of rice, sugar, tobacco orkerosene. These stores were designed primarily to supply the members of particularjoint families, often at subsidized prices. It was a system convenient to the LocalGovernment Council, which gained revenues by selling store, bakery and liquor licencesand exerted control by rejecting applications from suspected rogues or incompetents.The members of such licensed stores sold all their copra through the business. In returnthey gained an assured supply of imported goods for themselves and their households,and they avoided responsibility for managing the money or looking after bulk goodsthemselves.

Rather than being embryonic capitalist enterprises, these stores of the 1970s arebetter interpreted as the means by which new rules for the sharing of resources couldbe enforced. Periodically most imported goods tended to be in short supply, especiallysugar and tobacco, and if a person had a stock of such goods then sharing with othersbecame difficult to resist. It was easier if the goods belonged to the store yet wereavailable in small amounts to members only (Bayliss-Smith, 1974). In 1986 some storeswere still operating in this manner but others had become the local agent for a Honiaracompany that exported bêche-de-mer, following the boom in that commodity. Theseatoll agents built up new and bigger stores, selling major items such as fibreglass canoesand outboard engines. Goods were sold to everyone, not just joint family groupmembers, and sales were often on a credit basis. In this way customers were obliged tosell their bêche-de-mer through the store, and strong patron-client relationships wereestablished. By 2006 these differing types of stores had assumed different names withthe former family businesses being called ‘canteens’ and only the larger businesses beingreferred to as ‘stores’.

In 2000 there were 28 stores and 11 canteens operating in Luaniua, and all excepttwo were primarily engaged in the bêche-de-mer trade. The local businessmen whowere running the stores/canteens bought bêche-de-mer on the atoll and then sold it inHoniara to larger companies. These companies sold the bêche-de-mer to Chinese busi-nessmen who then exported it to Asia. After the export ban on bêche-de-mer, thenumber of stores, and especially canteens, declined significantly; those that remained inbusiness mainly traded copra. By 2007, two-thirds (18) of stores were still in businessbut only one canteen was still operating.

However, the stores and canteens continue to play an essential role for manyhouseholds, not only where profits are gained from buying and selling goods, but alsoas a social institution. Kinship ties are consolidated by the trading agreements that linkindividual households to particular stores to which they have joint family or fishinggroup links. However, disputes and serious family conflicts also occur in cases where afamily member has sought new business associates and is seen to have betrayed the tiesof kinship.

Conclusion: business as usual in a failing state

It is notable that the two main sources of cash income on Ontong Java in the periodsince 1880, copra and bêche-de-mer, have both been produced within ‘traditional’ socialstructures, the joint family and the fishing group. Both of these are male-dominatedgroups with associated gender implications. Access to copra is mediated through thejoint family’s ownership of land on islands planted with coconuts. A woman belongs tothe joint family of her father, but this right does not pass to her children who affiliate

66 Tim Bayliss-Smith, Katherine V. Gough, Andreas Egelund Christensen et al.

with their father’s joint family. As well as women having weaker rights to land they alsohave less entitlement to cash.

The same is true of the fishing group (brothers and their sons) where again the roleof women is subordinate. Since this group owns the means of transport it became theorganization for exploiting other marine resources for the market, particularly bêche-de-mer. Widows might receive some share of fish through men related to their deceasedhusbands (brothers-in-law or nephews), but it is unlikely that bêche-de-mer earningswill be redistributed to the same extent. Women (mothers or wives of fishermen) mayplay a role in processing these products and the circle of cash distribution may includethem, but is unlikely to encompass widows or others lacking direct involvement ineither production or processing. Therefore, while the materials for traditional housingand foods (coconuts, fish or taro) continue to be produced and distributed throughtraditional networks, ensuring relatively egalitarian access, the allocation of money isclearly gendered, even if it is earned by groups that are constituted in traditional ways.

With the onset of colonialism and modernity on Ontong Java, new local organiza-tions emerged for the governance of atoll resources and of these the united Ontong JavaArea Council and the two houses of chiefs replacing it have been the most important.Prior to their emergence, for more than a century resource management was mainlycontrolled and regulated by external organizations, in particular foreign commercialcompanies and traders. Officials of the German colonial government, and more espe-cially the British Protectorate, played a key role until independence in 1978. Sinceindependence, various government agencies based in the national capital Honiara inGuadalcanal, and in Malaita Province have influenced life on Ontong Java, especiallythrough the ban on bêche-de-mer. Of growing importance are the expatriate OntongJava businessmen based in Honiara, who have acted as traders in bêche-de-mer, copraand retail goods through their links to store managers in Luaniua and Pelau.

In the last four decades bêche-de-mer has dominated atoll life. When still regulatedby the Area Council it proved to be a sustainable resource and a reliable income source.Following the collapse of the Area Council authority in 1996 and a lack of compliancewith the former closed-season restrictions, the introduction of the trawling method ledto bêche-de-mer being harvested in greater quantities and the most successful familiesearned considerable incomes. However, this rate of exploitation proved unsustainableresulting in a government ban and Ontong Javans losing a lucrative income sourceovernight.

Community responses to this economic collapse have been diverse. Many house-holds have returned to subsistence-oriented practices, once again catching reef fish forconsumption and growing taro in the gardens. Copra production is being reintroducedas the main activity for cash income and a few households diversified into seaweedproduction but with limited success. In the years following the export ban on bêche-de-mer a significant number of people left Ontong Java for Lord Howe settlement inHoniara; almost one third of those living in Lord Howe in December 2006 had arrivedin the previous 12 months.

After a century of external pressures and innovations, it is not surprising thattraditional institutions are under stress and are sometimes replaced by new practices,new norms and the formation of new atoll organizations. As this paper shows, in thecase of Ontong Java the emerging local organizations for sustainable management of the1970s and 1980s were swept away under the force of external challenges. They willneed to be repaired if livelihoods in the next four decades are to match those enjoyedover the past 40 years.

Governance of atoll resources 67

Acknowledgements

Special thanks are due to all our assistants and the people of Ontong Java for their hospitality and

willingness to cooperate in this research. The 2006 research was part of the Galathea 3 Expedition

under the auspices of the Danish Expedition Foundation. This is Galathea 3 contribution no. 46. It

forms part of the CLIP project carried out by the University of Copenhagen, Danish Meteorological

Institute, University of the South Pacific and the Solomon Islands Meteorological Service Centre.

We thank the Danish Expedition Foundation for assuring the funding provided by Bikubenfonden.

Additional funding was provided by: Knud Højgaards Fond, COWIfonden, Brødrene Hartmann’s

Fond, Danish Social Science Research Council, Department of Geography and Geology (University

of Copenhagen), the Danish Meteorological Institute and the University of the South Pacific.

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