Abstract
Since fishing is a primary source of income to the coastal communities, conservation of marine natural resources is crucial to safeguard its sustainable supply. Therefore, intensive measures should be taken by all the stakeholders – from the authorities to the local fishermen. The precious coral reefs should be protected as important breeding habitat of various commercially valued species of marine resources and. Thus, in carrying out the political process of designating marine protected areas (MPAs) as marine parks, the local communities must also be engaged by the government due to their proximity to and dependency on the environment as direct resources users. Co-management or collaborative management by engaging the local communities, or community-based management, is the concept that could be able to remedy ineffective MPAs management in Peninsular Malaysia. Co-management or collaborative management approach between the authorities and the communities must be strategised by factoring in their local knowledge of living within and off the marine environment and resources. This study utilises content analysis method on the primary data, namely the national policies, federal acts, and state enactments. While the secondary data in form of official reports, scholarly articles and others deemed relevant are used to supplement and support the findings. This paper dwells on the possibility of shifting the process of MPAs designation from political process to co-management in Peninsular Malaysia, in order to achieve both environmental stability and the livelihood sustainability of the local communities.
Highlights
Seafood security is vital for the market but those in the fishing industries
There is an absence of any formal involvement of the local communities in the management of these marine parks, indicating the lack of local community engagement in marine conservation efforts
It is crucial to engage the local fishermen and communities in protecting the marine environment, starting from when the marine-protected areas (MPAs) designation process commences to the joint-management of the MPA. This stand is supported by Setiati, Peniati, & Partaya (2018) because the local communities are the ones being directly impacted by the volatility of supply in fishery and other marine resources
Summary
Seafood security is vital for the market but those in the fishing industries. Taking into consideration that fishing is a major source of income to the coastal communities, conservation of marine natural resources is crucial to safeguard its sustainable supply. By means as a tool to protect biodiversity and secure ecosystem services, marine-protected areas (MPAs) limit human activities, fishing activities (Richmond & Kotowicz, 2015). Following the institutional changes theories by de Morais et al, (2015), the arangement of maritime custodian agencies aforementioned made by the Malaysian government could positively influence various biodiversity conservation efforts, fisheries management and social welfare, as well as the global goal on food security of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (Tsurita et al, 2018). The local communities and the marine ecosystems could benefit from the protected areas, and the resources therein, due to the flow of ecosystem services (Tonin, 2018). As this study is a desktop research, the data gathered are mainly retrieved from the internet
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