If I could say one thing to USAID, FAO, or the World Bank about ocean governance

[breckie]

The conclusion I have reached is simply that if any of the local people using the resource are in a dire situation; their first obligation is survival rather than conservation, regardless of impending conditions. From my narrow perspective, it seems that many conservation efforts are centered on immediate resource recovery for the sake of the resource, and not necessarily its users. While no one can argue the importance of these efforts, (considering the state of coastal environments worldwide) without support from all resource users, imposing current 'vogue' management strategies (i.e. MPAs) cannot be expected to produce satisfactory results for both the users and the resource. Ideally, I would recommend these agencies to try to fix the dire situations in these coastal communities before trying to save the resource. However I realize the impracticability of this due mainly to power constraints (these countries do not need any more attempts at U.S. democratization), and time constraints, considering estimates say we only have a few decades of coral reefs left at current rates of destruction. This complexity only proves that as resource managers, our jobs might be more difficult than we first presumed. There is no panacea for global marine resource destruction. Each community has different requirements of its resources, and therefore most likely requires different management strategies. So it appears that the question to ask is should we save the resource or the resource users? I try to avoid thinking about it in those terms, because I know of a few examples in which both resource conservation and resource user conservation are occurring in the same community by the same management practices. (Example: Les, Bali Indonesia). And I don’t know if our own situation is quite that dire yet, but as an undergraduate I prefer naive optimism over inactive melancholy.

-Supposed pending FASA Environmental chair