Motivations to Support Marine Conservation Projects in North Tarawa, Kiribati.

Abstract

Local communities support for resource conservation projects are esential for their success. Nevertheless in the Pacific Island countries many community-based conservation (CBC) projects remain ineffective due to the lack of community memebers engagement. To better understand the motivations of local community memebers to support resource conservation projects; this research looks at 4 community-based conservation sites in North Tarawa, Kiribati. Conducted and did semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to investigate why community members support (or do not sipport) CBC . The results reveal that while local community memebers are overall aware of the significance of resource conservatons, they don't support or participate in conservations projects. Local community members motivation to participate in such projects are influenced by various of factors, including their status in a household or community, village practices, th e quality of community leadership and their past experiences with similar projects. Our research also finds that community members to become unsupportive with conservation projects when their daily livelihood activities are restricted by the projects. This research suggests that the project organisers need to understand such factors and need to be more strategic to retain community members' support for the success of the conservation project.