Multivocal responses to conservation in Maluku province, Indonesia: Biocultural diversity, protest and management in a zone of ecological transition

Abstract

The Moluccan islands of eastern Indonesia (Maluku) were amongst the last frontiers to be opened‐up for large‐scale resource extraction and economic development in modern times. The interventions of organized conservation science and local conservation activity are also recent. Yet the area has a complex economic history and historical ecology linked to the spice trade, which itself prompted early scholarly interest in its natural history. Conservation practice since 1980 is shown to be deeply embedded in local political events and cultural contexts, exhibiting a diversity of institutional forms and a 'cacophony' of community voices. We conclude that conservation research and interventions need to pay more attention to historical ecologies, biocultural linkages and distinctively local patterns of conservation activity.