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29
Revisiting a Honduran Landscape
Journal of Latin American Geography, 8 (1), 2009
The Spaces of Social Capital: Livelihood Geogra-
phies and Marine Conservation in the Cayos Cochi-
nos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
David Lansing
Department of Geography
The Ohio State University
Abstract
This article explores the relation between a household’s social capital and its use of ma-
rine resources in the Cayos Cochinos Marine Reserve. Recent writings on social capital’s
role in facilitating community conservation efforts have highlighted the ways in which
strong levels of this asset can produce positive conservation outcomes. In contrast, this
paper argues that social capital formation and use at the household level can produce a
geography of resource use that runs counter to the zoning-based resource restrictions
that often typify co-managed conservation areas. Drawing on ethnographic and survey
work from the Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, this paper shows how marine
resources help Garifuna fishing families build networks of trust and reciprocity, which in
turn allows them to access marine resources and mobilize them across space in ways that
are at odds with the geography of the reserve’s stated management plan.
Keywords: social capital, conservation co-management, livelihoods, Honduras
Resumen
En este artículo se estudia la relación existente entre el capital social del hogar y la uti-
lización de los recursos marinos en la Área Marina Protegida de Cayos Cochinos. En re-
cientes trabajos sobre la función del capital social para facilitar los esfuerzos comunitarios
de conservación se han destacado las distintas maneras en que un nivel sólido de este ac-
tivo puede dar lugar a resultados conservacionistas positivos. En contraste, en este escrito
se sostiene que la formación del capital social y su utilización en el nivel del hogar pueden
dar lugar a una geografía de utilización de recursos que discrepa con las restricciones zon-
ales de recursos que suelen tipificar las áreas de cogestión de la conservación. A partir de
estudios etnográficos y de encuestas sobre la Reserva Marina de Cayos Cochinos, en este
trabajo se muestra cómo los recursos marinos contribuyen a que las familias de pescado-
res de la comunidad Garifuna consoliden relaciones de confianza y reciprocidad que a su
vez les permiten acceder a los recursos marinos y a movilizarlos espacialmente de manera
discrepante con la geografía del plan expuesto para la gestión de la Reserva.
Palabras clave: capital social, cogestión de la conservación, medios de vida, Honduras
Introduction
In the middle of the day, a young Garifuna sherman named Hugo1 was return-
ing from a morning of shing in Honduras’ Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area.
Before he reached his home on the tiny island of Chachahuate, however, he landed his
small dugout canoe on a deserted stretch of beach on Isla Mayor, the largest island in the
area. After getting out of his canoe, he soon came across a nest of sea turtle eggs. Upon
nding this nest Hugo promptly began loading the eggs into his boat, only to be caught
by reserve guards patrolling the area. If the guards and reserve ofcials had followed the
30 Journal of Latin American Geography
letter of the law, Hugo would have lost his boat and spent six months in jail. Instead,
reserve ofcials took the eggs he collected to an incubator, with the hope that some will
still hatch, banned the sherman from this particular island, and sent him home. This
seemingly prudent decision, sensitive to both the needs of sea turtles and Hugo’s wife
and children, was met with incredulity by Hugo. When asked what he thought about the
guard’s actions, he complained that by not allowing him to keep the eggs, the guards hurt
not just him, but his friends and family with whom he was going to share the eggs.
Hugo is not alone in his negative feelings toward conservation rules that, on the
surface, seem sensible. An opinion survey taken by the author in 2004 found that 77% of
surveyed- residents on Chachahuate (which is located within the Cayos Cochinos Marine
Protected Area) (Figure 1) believed that they lived better before the creation of the re-
serve (n = 31; see Table 1). This is a striking nding in light of the fact that 87% of those
surveyed support some sort of formal protection for the area. Interviews with residents
revealed a common sentiment that industrial shing boats have severely depleted the sh
stocks of the Cayos Cochinos, and it is only through legal protection that they can be
kept out. While over half (55%) of Chachahuate’s residents said that there are the same
amount or more sh and lobster today than before the creation of the reserve, 90%
agreed that it was easier to obtain resources before the park’s creation. In other words,
residents support a protected area in theory, and many even recognize the benets of a
protected area for improving sh stocks, however, the deleterious livelihood impact of
specic conservation rules has resulted in negative views toward the reserve.
These contrasting opinions about the Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area
(hereafter CCMPA) reect a paradox in conservation management: there is often support
for the general idea of natural resource protection, but not necessarily for the specic
restrictions that accompany conservation policy. This paradox extends beyond the case
of the Cayos Cochinos. The inability to translate a general desire for resource protection
into active support for specic restrictions and regulations has long bedeviled conserva-
tion efforts worldwide (Elliot et al. 2001; Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2004). In response
to these problems, the last 25 years have seen the rise of a variety of conservation co-
Table 1: Opinion survey of Chachahuate residents (n = 31)
Question
%
Yes
%
No
% No
response
Did you live better before the creation of the
protected area? 77 10 13
Was it easier to obtain the resources you need
to live before the park? 90 3 7
Has the park has created problems in your life? 61 39 0
Has the lobster ban hurt your income? 65 35 0
Are there today, ten years later, more fish and
lobster? 55 45 0
Do you believe that it is worthwhile to continue
protecting the Cayos Cochinos? 87 10 3
The park employees help the community? 13 87 0
The park benefits the community in some way? 19 77 3
31
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
Figure 1: Location of the Cayos Cochinos and study sites of Nueva Armenia and
Chachahuate. Other villages with a presence in the reserve include Sambo Creek and
Río Esteban.
management plans, often accompanied by spatially-based policies, such as buffer zones,
in order to integrate the goals ecosystem management and the needs of local resource
users (Stevens 1997; Western and Wright 1994). These efforts have had mixed success at
best, often alienating a number of groups whose livelihoods depend on accessing these
territories (Few 2001; Neumann 1997).
Perhaps recognizing the politically untenable nature of this type of policy, others
in the conservation community have stressed the importance in harnessing local com-
munity support for co-managed areas. It is within this context that social capital has
increasingly been highlighted as a way to facilitate the production of successfully man-
aged conservation spaces, in which local actors not only abide by conservation rules, but
actively participate in their creation and enforcement (Ostrom 1990; Pretty and Smith
2004; Jentoft et al. 2007). The concept of social capital has, by now, become well known.
While its denition can be a point of debate and confusion (Harriss and de Renzio 1997),
32 Journal of Latin American Geography
it is commonly understood as a term that tries to capture the often nebulous social rela-
tions that translate into collective and individual benets. Relations of trust, networks of
reciprocity and exchange, collectively understood norms, and the recognition of com-
mon rules are all aspects of social capital that have been highlighted by researchers that
are important to long-term conservation success (cf. McCay and Jentoft 1996; Pretty
and Ward 2001; Uphoff and Wijayaratna 1999). A number of scholars have argued that
strong levels of social capital frequently translates into the presence of a robust civil soci-
ety, through which meaningful connections between the state or an environmental NGO
can be made in order to establish a co-management framework (Krishna and Uphoff
1999; Rudd et al. 2003; Adger 2003).
These writings often emphasize the workings of social capital at the institutional
or community scale, with comparatively less attention paid to how this asset is formed
and mobilized at the household level. In light of the continued conicts between local
resource users and conservation planners, and the increasing attention paid to the role of
social capital in community-based conservation, I aim to re-focus the concept of social
capital as it is presently employed in the conservation literature, from the community
scale to that of the household. Following writings concerning with the “network” ap-
proach to social capital (cf. Woolcock and Narayan 2000), which focuses on the social
networks that build upon social relations within and between groups, I conceptualize
household social capital as the utilization of social networks of trust, reciprocity, and
exchange by individuals within and between households in order to mobilize resources
for the purposes of building and sustaining a household’s livelihood. This view of social
capital is in contrast to what Woolcock and Narayan (2000) have described as the com-
munitarian or institutional view of social capital (what I refer to here as community
social capital), where relations of trust and reciprocity between people translate into
collective benets such as strong civil society institutions, or responsive modes of local
governance. While many of the building blocks of each type of social capital may be
similar (e.g. relations of trust, reciprocity, common norms), I suggest the key distinction
between the two is that the function and outcomes of this asset are different depending
on the scale in which they employed, where social capital formed and mobilized at the
scale of the household can potentially produce forms of resource use that are not neces-
sarily congruent with practices of resource management that are formulated at the scale
of institutions. I make this conceptual distinction not to argue that one form is somehow
superior to the other, but rather, to draw attention to the scalar differences in how this
asset is formed and used. Doing so, I hope to facilitate a dialogue between conservation
policy makers and cultural and political ecologists, who have long demonstrated the im-
portance of household-level informal networks toward shaping patterns of resource use,
and take a small step toward recognizing that robust local institutions are necessary, but
not sufcient, for the long-term viability of a conservation area. Drawing on empirical
work from the Cayos Cochinos, I hope to demonstrate that a household’s social capital
produces spatial patterns of resource use that are often at odds with the zoning plans and
buffer zones that are often proposed as a more geographic way of making conservation
co-management “work”.
In the following section, I offer a brief review of the ways in which social capital has
been analytically conceptualized as a community based asset in the conservation literature.
I then draw on work from cultural ecology, the “sustainable livelihoods” literature, and mi-
gration studies to reconceptualize social capital as a household-level asset. In the second
section, I describe the study site and my research methods for understanding household-
based social capital. In section three I present ethnographic and household survey evidence
which demonstrates the ways in which the livelihood spaces are shaped by a household’s
33
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
social capital. In the nal section I discuss ways in which these spaces are incongruent with
the current spatially-based restrictions of the co-management plan for the Cayos Cochinos.
Social Capital, Conservation Co-management, and the Spaces of Rural
Livelihoods
The last twenty-ve years has seen both the proliferation of conservation areas
(Zimmerer et al. 2004), as well as explicit attempts to incorporate the needs of local
resource users within these territories (Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2004; Zimmerer
2000). While, in theory, co-management and integrated conservation and development
projects (ICDPs) are supposed to be win-win situations, where local communities enjoy
the benets of long-term, sustainably managed natural resources, the political process
of creating these territories has been criticized on a variety of fronts, including: poorly
dened notions of what constitutes participation (Few 2001; Wells and Brandon 1993);
economic and participatory components that fail to substantially improve economic con-
ditions or local participation (Brenner and Job 2006; Campbell and Vainio-Mattila 2004;
Mehta and Kellert 1998); an overly broad understanding of what constitutes a commu-
nity (Agrawal and Gibson 1999); and the dominance of views of ecologists over that of
local stakeholders (Campbell 2002). The territorial outcomes of these projects, and their
impacts on local communities, have also been extensively critiqued (e.g. Peluso 1993;
Neumann 1998; Turner 1999; Robbins et al. 2006). Efforts at co-managed conservation
spaces have resulted in conservation efforts that attempt to accommodate community
needs, but instead often fail to fully engage with the complex social and political dynam-
ics of these communities in a way that assures broad-based support (e.g. St. Martin 2001;
Daniels and Bassett 2002).
An increasing number of writers within the conservation literature have begun to
point to social capital as a way to overcome many of these difculties. Drawing on the
“classic” characteristics of social capital, as developed by Coleman (1988) and Putnam et
al. (1993), a number of writers have argued that social bonds of norms, trust, and reci-
procity minimizes self-interested behavior that results in over-use of natural resources
(e.g. Ostrom 1990; Pretty and Ward 2001). The existence of high levels of connectedness
between individuals and groups, along with high levels of trust and reciprocity lays the
groundwork through which common rules, norms and sanctions within a community
can emerge (McCay and Jentoft 1998). This view of social capital’s role in commons
management has resulted in an inux of empirical work dedicated to examining the
link between a community’s social capital and conservation successes (e.g. Anderson et
al. 2002; Pretty and Smith 2004). Such studies have covered a diversity of conservation
efforts such as: wildlife protection (Wagner et al. 2007), rangelands management (Arnold
and Fernández-Giménez 2007), sustainable forestry (Mukherjee 2002), sheries manage-
ment (Rudd et al. 2003), lake protection (Kramer 2007), sustainable agriculture (Uphoff
and Wijayaratna 1999), and wetland protection (La Peyre et al. 2001).
The importance of social capital has also appeared frequently in writings on sh-
eries and marine protected areas (e.g. Adger 2003; Sekhar 2007; Rudd et al. 2003). Recent
scholarship on the establishment of marine protected areas has recognized the impor-
tance of embedding rules and regulations within the community (Jentoft et al. 2007;
McCay and Jentoft 1998). A common theme through these writings is that without the
support of community norms and rules, there is little likelihood of the long term gover-
nance success of a marine protected area. Adger (2003), for example, argues that social
capital provides the adaptive capacity necessary for the sustainable harvest of marine
resources, with social capital playing multiple roles, depending on the relative strength
of the state and local institutions. In a context with strong institutions and strong state
34 Journal of Latin American Geography
involvement, the interconnectedness between groups that is often a hallmark of social
capital can serve as the “glue” that allows these groups to work effectively together. In a
context where either the state or formal institutions are weak, informal social networks
can serve as important avenues for decision making in sheries management (see also
Bennett et al. 2000; Cooke et al. 2000).
Collectively these works suggest that a community’s social capital can lead to
conservation success, however, these studies tend posit social capital as one of many
causal variables, resulting in what Agrawal (2001) laments as “thin” case studies of natu-
ral resource management, with little attention paid to the complex social relations that
produce community norms and networks of reciprocity that have been identied as so
important. In addition, there is rarely engagement with the ways in which social capital
might lead to conservation failure. In light of the extensive critiques centering on the
difculties that co-managed conservation spaces have encountered over the years, it is
instructive to think through the ways in which social capital might undermine, rather
than facilitate, the management of conservation areas. For this, I argue that it is use-
ful to think about how social capital is formed and used at the scale of the household.
Household Social Capital
The idea that social capital can be an individual asset is not new. The original
formulation of the idea of social capital by Bourdieu (1985) conceives of the relations
that people build with each other as something that is intentionally done in order for
that individual to benet later. Similarly, Coleman (1988) argued for the importance of
social capital in terms of the benets they bring to individuals. Beginning with Robert
Putnam’s work on civic traditions in Italy, however, the idea of social capital has a com-
munity asset has taken root where, as Alejandro Portes (2000) puts it: “A subtle transition
took place…where social capital became an attribute of the community itself. In its new
garb, its benets accrued not so much to individuals as to the collectivity as a whole…”
(p. 3). This is not to say that the individual cultivation of and benets from social capital
is no longer recognized by writers on the subject. Instead, social capital has come to
be commonly described as a community-held asset, with effects felt at the level of the
community.
What are the implications for conservation spaces when the focus of one’s analy-
sis is “scaled down” and social capital is viewed as an asset that is held and cultivated by
households? There are writings across a number of disciplines that point to a connection
between a household’s social capital, the geography of its use of natural resources and
its livelihood activities. While rarely addressing social capital explicitly, a substantial body
of work by cultural ecologists points to the signicance of household level bonds of
trust and labor exchanges for agrarian households (e.g. Netting 1993; Wilk 1997). These
labor exchanges often help produce the emerging spatial patterns of land use in a com-
munity. Richard Wilk (1997), for example, shows how the coupling of community work
groups with community norms of usufruct land tenure produces the complex patchwork
of land use among Kekchi Mayan communities in southern Belize. Other writers have
shown how a household’s social support networks are actively cultivated through activi-
ties such as gift giving (Berry 1993; Godoy et al. 2007). Social networks have been shown
to facilitate other activities, such as rain forest extraction, as well as expand the geograph-
ic scope in which these products can be traded (Coomes and Barham 1997; McSweeney
2004a). McSweeney’s work in the Honduran Mosquitia shows how a household’s social
networks facilitates access to certain rain forest resources (McSweeney 2004b), and how
a household’s embeddedness in wider social relations allows for these products to be
traded more widely across space (McSweeney 2004a).
35
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
A number of writers, utilizing the “sustainable livelihoods” framework, have more
explicitly identied social capital as an important asset for households, where social capi-
tal is one of a suite of capitals (nancial, physical, natural etc.) that households possess
and use in building a livelihood (e.g. Ellis 2000; Bebbington 1999; Bury 2004; Turner
2007). Bebbington (1999), for example, highlights the ways in which a household’s social
capital can help it access resources through its linkages with both institutions and other
individuals (see also Bebbington and Perreault 1999). Finally, a number of studies on
migration offer probably the most explicit account of how a household’s social capital
and the spatiality of household livelihoods intersect. Studies have demonstrated the im-
portance of an individual’s social networks in facilitating migration (Portes and Sensen-
brenner 1993; Portes 1997; Silvey and Elmhirst 2003), and how migration transforms
households and communities through remittances (Bilsborrow and Okoth-Ogendo
1992; Massey 1990; Massey and Basem 1992), often resulting in new patterns of land use
and resource extraction in home communities (Gould 1994). In addition, arriving mi-
grants can disrupt community-held social capital, transforming the use and management
of natural resources (Curran 2002: Lutz and Scherbov 2000). Curran (2002), for example,
argues how individually held social capital can help facilitate migration to coastal areas,
giving these new arrivals access to marine resources while potentially disrupting long-
established community norms of commonly held resources.
Collectively, these diverse works point to linkages between a household’s social
capital, its access to resource use, and livelihoods that are sectorally and spatially diverse,
where one’s social capital helps facilitate the geographic reach of one’s access to resourc-
es, and allow for a diversity of income-earning activities, with some occurring in other
communities. This often means that a household’s embeddedness in wider social net-
works is a critical means by which one is able create a geographically diverse livelihood,
helping to mitigate the damage that future unforeseen events may have. If a household
loses its agricultural crops due to ooding, for example, it can still survive to plant again
if that same household is receiving remittances from another community. In this way,
social capital can be understood as, what Frank Ellis (2000) has termed called, a “spatially
diverse means of support” for households.
The idea of a spatially diverse livelihood mirrors one of the key assumption in the
livelihoods literature, which is that household are actively utilizing their various assets to
engage in diverse activities in ways that allow for them to be exible enough to withstand
future shocks or disruptions (cf. Bebbington 1999; Ellis 2000; Scoones 1998). While
this literature is mostly concerned with sectoral diversication, here one can see how a
geographic diversity can be useful as well. Here I suggest that an individual’s social net-
works of reciprocity and exchange, and the relations of trust and common norms that
hold them together, constitute a form of social capital that is a critical asset in helping
marginalized households secure a livelihood that is composed of diverse income earning
activities. This diversity is achieved, in part, through mobilizing resources across space,
and taking advantages of differences between places in earning a living, resulting in a
particular “livelihood geography” for households.
Understanding how a household’s social capital can facilitate access to resources
while producing geographically diverse livelihoods can further inform critiques of spa-
tially-based conservation plans by providing a window on the dynamic mechanisms by
which the livelihoods of local resource users unfold in a way that conict with the static
conservation geographies of buffer zones and no-take areas. There have already been a
number of scholars who have shown how the day-to-day management of resources by
local users results in a geography of resource use that is complex, dynamic and exible
(e.g. Berkes 1999; Rocheleau and Ross 1995; Walker and Peters 2001), which is often
36 Journal of Latin American Geography
obscured by the abstract spaces of conservation (e.g. Rocheleau 1997; Daniels and Bas-
sett 2002). Here, I wish to show how these livelihood spaces are both produced by, and
enable, a household’s social capital. I argue that by conceptualizing social capital as a
household asset, and showing the livelihood spaces it produces, one can turn much of
the recent writings on conservation and social capital on its head, where relations of trust
and reciprocity are not a means by which local communities come to gain acceptance of
a zoning plan, but instead, show how the often hidden geographies of resource use can
produce conict with a conservation area. This can allow for a ne-grained understand-
ing of why there is so-often a disconnect between proposed conservation restrictions
and the support of local resource users. Doing so can help provide a means to engage
scholars and policy makers who stress the importance of social capital in conservation
co-management, but often overlook the sources of some of the negative consequences
of these policies.
In order to understand the link between a household’s social capital and its liveli-
hood geography I will draw on empirical work in the Cayos Cochinos in order to answer
the following questions. First, in what ways does a household’s social capital help facilitate
a geographically diverse livelihood? Second, what ways does a household’s social capital
allow for access to marine resources? Third, what is the relation between a household’s
use of marine resources, and the maintenance of its social capital?
Study Site and Methods
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area (CCMPA) is located along the North
coast of Honduras and includes two small islands and thirteen coral cays. The Cayos
Cochinos are used as shing grounds by Garifuna communities located along the main-
land. Two communities (Nueva Armenia and Río Esteban) have their own permanent
settlements within the reserve, while another community (Sambo Creek) has a temporary
shing camp on one of the small cays. There is a primary school located in Río Este-
ban’s settlement on Cayo Mayor, which is attended by children from Chachahuate as
well. Chachahuate, the focus of this paper, is a small cay approximately 150 meters long
and 50 meters across, lacking in potable drinking water and electricity. It was originally
a temporary shing camp for residents of Nueva Armenia, but has over time, morphed
into a permanently occupied cay with approximately 100 full-time residents, a number
of small stores, and 35 permanent structures of mostly thatch roof houses (eld survey
2004),2 making it the largest Garifuna settlement in the Cayos Cochinos. Nueva Armenia
has a population of 1,500 inhabitants (INE 2001) and sits on a low-lying, swampy area
near the mouth of the Río Papaloteca. Approximately ten kilometers of ocean separate
Nueva Armenia from Chachahuate.
The Garifuna are an ethnic group located primarily along the Caribbean coasts
of Honduras and Belize with a few villages on the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala and
Nicaragua. There are also signicant numbers of Garifuna located in the United States
(Gonzalez 1988; Palacio 2002). The wide dispersal of Garifuna populations is indicative
of this group’s long history of adaptation and migration. Since being forcibly displaced
from St. Vincent to the island of Roataan in the 18th century, both shing and migration
have been a central feature of Garifuna life. After arriving on the Honduran mainland,
Garifuna men were almost immediately employed as soldiers in the Spanish army, an oc-
cupation that allowed time for shing (Gonzalez 1997). The year 1832 marked the arrival
of the rst large-scale migration of Garifuna to Belize, after the defeat of the conserva-
tive Spanish forces that many Garifuna had supported (Gonzalez 1988). Since this time,
there has been continuing contact and movement between Garifuna populations in
37
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
Figure 2: Schematic map of the zoning plan implemented by the Honduran Coral Reef
Fund. [Map based on the zoning plan presented in the Cayos Cochinos management
plan (HCRF 2004)].
Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala, driven by the ongoing search for wage-earning and
trading opportunities (Palacio 2002), a pattern that has continued today with Garifuna
migration extending to the United States (Gonzales 1988; Palacio 2002).
The CCMPA has its beginnings in 1993, when the Cayos Cochinos Biological
Reserve was established by a presidential decree, which initially placed a moratorium on
the extraction of all marine life in an area of ve miles in every direction from the central
cay (Brondo and Woods 2007). Soon thereafter, navy patrols began enforcing these rules.
After an outcry by local and national Garifuna organizations, the government modied
the ban to allow for “subsistence shing” so long it does not include nets or diving
for lobster. In addition, Garifuna were prohibited from using any trees in the area for
building or repairing their homes. In 2004, the size and shape of the CCMPA changed,
when it was expanded to its present size of 485.3 km2 (HCRF 2004; see Figure 1). This
expansion was accompanied by a new management plan, which included spatially-based
zoning restrictions (Figure 2). These restrictions include a middle zone that encompasses
the islands and is a permanent “no-take” area, while the outer zones are designated as
38 Journal of Latin American Geography
rotating “no-take” areas where shing is either banned or temporarily allowed, depend-
ing on the time of year. This plan also includes an area where lobster diving is allowed
for part of each month. This management plan was formulated by members of the
Honduran Coral Reef Fund (hereafter HCRF) with extensive technical input from the
World Wildlife Fund. According to the management plan, the no-take area is designed
to provide a spawning ground for juvenile sh while the seasonally rotating no-shing
zones are designed to provide further protection for critical coral habitat in the area.
Other restrictions from the previous management plan also apply: no lobster diving with
tanks, no shing with nets, no hunting of sea turtles or harvesting their eggs. Human
concerns are generally reected through two mechanisms. First, the rotating exceptions
to the shing bans in the outer-zones are meant to accommodate “subsistence shing.”
Second, three areas within the no-take zone are designated as places that local shermen
can use in times of bad weather (as identied by the HCRF). This second accommoda-
tion was added after the zoning plan was presented by the HCRF to representatives of
local communities, who pointed out the difculty that many shermen would have mak-
ing it to the approved outer shing areas in times of choppy seas.
During my interviews with the management of the HCRF, the managers indicated
a great deal of pride in the pains that they have made in incorporating local communi-
ties into the design and implementation of the management plan. They stressed that
the management plan was formulated in consultation with “community leaders”, along
with extensive outreach efforts and development projects that have been undertaken
with local communities. Such projects have included building a latrine on the island of
Chachahuate (which has since fallen into disuse), a pig-raising project in Nueva Armenia,
environmental education activities among all communities affected by the reserve, and
scholarships for local students.
As indicated in the introduction, the management plan is very unpopular among
residents of Chachahuate and Nueva Armenia. The process for formulating the manage-
ment plan was commonly derided by local residents. One common complaint was that
the “community representatives” were not locally elected leaders, but rather hand-picked
by HCRF, and were people that did not represent the community’s interests. Community
meetings about the new management plan were held, but only after the plan was formu-
lated. In addition to problems associated with creating this plan, there are a number of
points of concern about the plan itself. One principal concern is that the geography of
shing in the reserve is often determined by the weather, especially among the majority
of shermen who use small dugout canoes, and a plan that imposes such large territorial
restrictions over the best shing grounds, is unrealistic for most shermen. Other restric-
tions, such as the bans on conch and turtle, long-time staples in the Garifuna diet, were
likewise seen as too heavy-handed.
An examination of the management plan shows that ecosystem priorities clearly
took precedence in forming the geography of the zoning plan (cf. HCRF 2004). Each
restrictive zone is described in terms of their ecosystem function. The core no-take area,
for example, has extensive information on its importance as a habitat for juvenile sh,
while the outer zones are all characterized in terms of the coral habitat that they encom-
pass. The characteristics of shermen in the reserve are discussed, but in a separate sec-
tion, and only in terms of the commercially protable sh that they harvest, and the ways
in which their activities might be depleting the sh stocks in the Cayos Cochinos. While
reserve ofcials recognize that there is a complex and dynamic relationship between
shing families on the cays and their villages on the mainland, this is not reected in the
management plan. There is no mention of how, for example, the resource restrictions of
the CCMR might affect the livelihoods of mainland families.
39
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
In order to understand the ways in which household social capital and resource use
intersect, I draw on ethnographic and survey work carried out in July and August 2004. I
conducted a household survey on Chachahuate (n = 28) among all households living on
Chachahuate during this time. I interviewed the household head and asked about income
sources, household assets, family structure, and social ties. In addition, I conducted in-
depth semi-structured interviews among residents of both Chachahuate (n = 15), Nueva
Armenia (n=15), and managers at the HCRF (n = 3). Finally, I accompanied a number of
shermen on lobstering and shing trips. In the following sections, I present results that
are a mix of statistical evidence from the household survey as well as ethnographic sup-
porting detail. This mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence is intended to be comple-
mentary, and overcome one of the key barriers in research on social capital, which is that
its central qualities - such as networks of reciprocity and norms of trust - are difcult to
assess for the researcher. Past research on social capital tends to be measurement by proxy,
with a resulting body of work that empirically evaluates social capital in terms of institu-
tions which serve largely as indirect indicators of this asset (Bebbington 1999). My use of
survey data is intended to provide a broad picture of the ways in which households or-
ganize their income earning activities, while supporting ethnographic detail digs into the
specic mechanism by which a household’s social capital helps facilitate these activities.
Social capital’s livelihood spaces
Home to an island store, the island’s two-way radio, and the general gathering
place for most residents on the island, it didn’t take me long to see that Myrna’s house
is the social hub of Chachahuate. After a few more days on the island, it was easy to see
that Myrna was heavily invested in trading goods between Chachahuate and the main-
land. Despite the lack of electricity, her store is always well stocked with ice cold sodas
and beers. In addition, she frequently purchases sh and lobster on the island and ships
them to the mainland for resale as often as two or three times a week. She also took care
of people’s houses while they were away by renting them out to visiting tourists, and sells
them meals using the sh that her husband catches. The diversity of activities that Myrna
engages in is not unusual for this island. Table 2 shows the different income activities
that households engage in, along with households’ primary income source. While the
most common activities are shing (86%) and catching lobster (68%), there are a number
of other activities that are indirectly related to marine extraction in which a substantial
number of households participate. Selling prepared food on the island, for example, is
an activity that 43% of households do. Myrna is also an example of a household that is
able to engage in a number of activities without owning a boat. Myrna only owns a small,
run-down dugout canoe, which she rarely uses. Instead, Myrna has been able to sustain a
livelihood on this island that is based primarily on shipping goods across space by relying
on her extensive network of friends on the island who carry these items for her.
As would be expected for life on a tiny cay lacking in fresh water, rewood, and
electricity, boats play a key role in the maintenance of livelihoods and the mobilization of
resources on Chachahuate. Boats are a necessity for not only access to the island but also
for shipping necessary goods and supplies between the island and the mainland. There
are two main types of boats on Chachahuate. Cayucos (Figure 3) are small, two-person
dugout canoes that are powered by either a small sail or paddle. A trip from Chachahuate
to Nueva Armenia in a cayuco takes from four to six hours and their small size makes
it difcult to carry more than small quantities of sh and supplies. Canoas (Figure 4) are
larger dugout canoes that can hold up to ten people or more and are powered by a
40 Journal of Latin American Geography
Table 2: Household demographic and activity information (n = 28)
small diesel motor. A canoa trip between Chachahuate and the mainland takes about one
hour. In general, when one wants to carry lobster traps and ferry goods and supplies
between the mainland and the island, canoas are usually used (eld observation).
While boats are indispensable for life on this island as a whole, examples like
Myrna’s show that, for individual households, supporting an island-based livelihood that
involves moving resources across space is not necessarily dependent upon the type of
boat that one owns. Table 3 lists differences in household livelihood activities by boat
type. Despite the differences between these two boats, there are relatively few differences
in livelihood activities between cayuco and canoa owning households. The only signi-
cant difference is with lobster trapping, where canoa owning households are signicantly
more engaged. Other activities that would seem to require a larger boat, such as sh
mongering (buying sh on the island, and reselling on the mainland) show no signicant
differences in participation between cayuco or canoa owning households.
Here we can see the role that a household’s networks of social support play in
supporting a livelihood that encompasses moving resources across space. Fish monger-
ing is an activity in which moving marine resources across space is absolutely essential,
yet ownership of the physical asset that facilitates this the most (a canoa) does not play
a signicant role in the ability of someone to carry out this activity. This trend is fur-
ther conrmed by a logistic regression on the probability that a household engages in
sh mongering (Table 4). The household’s type of boat ownership was not a signicant
predictor for sh mongering and, surprisingly, the number of times a month a house-
hold member visits the mainland was a negative predictor for this activity (p = .015). In
other words, the more often a household on Chachahuate has physical contact with the
mainland, the less likely it is to engage in an activity that, by denition, requires contact
with the mainland.
Mean
Age household head 35
# in household age 15-65 2.1
# in household age <15 1.8
times/months visits mainland 2.4
% that own property on mainland 64
Presence of income generating
activityb Mean %
Primary income
source Mean %
Fishes 86 Fishes 36
Traps lobster 68 Traps lobster 18
Dives for lobster 50 Fish Mongering 18
Fish mongering 39
Tourism
employment 14
Sells food supplies 18 Very Diversified 14
Sells prepared food 43
Tourism employment 11
Rents out house 14
41
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
Figure 3: Cayuco with sail (photo by author).
This counterintuitive nding becomes clearer when one situates this activity with
respect to the role a household’s social capital plays in facilitating this livelihood strategy.
A closer look at Myrna’s example shows how she is able to use both her ties on the
mainland and on the island in order to sustain a livelihood that extends across space
via sh-mongering, despite a relative lack of physical assets. 3 Myrna’s sister, Rosa, who
lives on the mainland, handles the resale of sh on the mainland, and buys and sends
supplies back to Myrna for her store. Fish and goods are shipped several times a week
(eldnotes, 2004). All of this is done without using any of their own small cayucos, but
rather, through shipping sh on other people’s boats and in other people’s coolers. De-
spite maintaining livelihoods that are, in large part, depending on shipping goods across
space, neither of these women own the necessary boats to do so.
Here Myrna is able to draw on a network of boat-owners, who carry her sh and
supplies between the two places. Myrna is also able to use these boats without any form
of direct compensation. Myrna explained to me that she only uses the same three or four
people to ship her sh and supplies. When I asked her why this is so, she responded: “My
sh go with people I trust, so I know they will arrive.” While the relationship between
Myrna and her canoa-owning friends is one certainly based on trust, the other key feature
42 Journal of Latin American Geography
of social capital, reciprocity, is not as obvious. Talking with the boat owners that move
Myrna’s supplies, it was clear that they are not paid for their services. “I’m going that way
anyway”, was a common response to the question of why the carry her sh and supplies.
After spending some time on the island, however, it became apparent that other, more
hidden forms of reciprocity were at play.
As mentioned before, Myrna’s house served as something of a social hub on the
island. It was the only place to get a cold beer, and was the center of the all-important
two-way radio. In addition, Myrna acted as something of a rental agent for people who
had houses on the island, but weren’t currently living in them. She would maintain these
houses and rent them out to tourists. While at rst glance, it might seem that Myrna
was able to act as a store owner and sh monger thanks to the goodwill of a few canoa
owners.
Figure 4: Canoa getting ready for a trip to the Cayos Cochinos (photo by author).
A closer look reveals that Myrna occupies an important place on the island: the
center of communication with the mainland, the source of a cold drink, and someone
who will look after your house if you leave for a few months. In many ways, Myrna’s ac-
tivities allow for a slightly easier life on the island, and by doing so, one could argue that
it is the boat owners that are in debt to Myrna for making their time on the island a little
more comfortable. One sherman expressed just such a sentiment to me (with a cold
43
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
beer in his hand): “Why do I carry Myrna’s things? Because if I didn’t we wouldn’t have
anything cold to drink.” There are no doubt small favors and gifts that occur between
Myrna and the boat owners, actions that are all but impossible for an outside researcher
to see or track. What can be seen, however, is that Myrna’s livelihood is clearly facilitated
by her social ties, which in turn, helps her to form a livelihood that allows her to occupy
an economic role on the island that further strengthens these same connections.
Social capital and access
Boat Borrowing
The example of Myrna and Rosa demonstrates how a livelihood based on mobi-
lizing resources across space is facilitated through strong social networks. The example
of young men on the island who engage in lobster trapping are an example of social
capital mobilizing a household’s labor supply across space. Every lobster season attracts
single men to Chachahuate who do not own their own boats, but are still able to trap and
dive for lobster by entering into a relationship with a patrón. A typical patrón relationship
is one in which the patrón will provide a canoa and lobster traps to two men, who are
then obligated to sell all of their lobster back to the patrón at a set, below market, price.
This is not an uncommon arrangement: 40% of all households have patrón borrower
living with them. Of all canoa using individuals, 55% are in a patrón relationship.
While this is a more formalized economic relationship that allows men, who have
few physical assets of their own to earn money for their households on the mainland,
the familiar traits of trust and reciprocity are important for facilitating this activity. Inter-
views with patróns on the island reveal the importance of trust between the patrón and
his client. The client is entrusted with the care of all of the equipment he is loaned, and
to be honest about how much lobster his traps generate. Patróns have indicated that the
primary consideration in who they will hire is how well they know that person, whether
it is through a previous relationship or a family connection. In addition, as seasonal
residents on the island, clients must nd a place to live on the island. This is no simple
task. The island is small, and with most houses already occupied, clients generally need to
enter into an arrangement with an already-established household on the island. It is not
surprising then that the majority of lobster clients on Chachahuate stay with distantly-
related family members (e.g. cousins, aunts) who are permanent residents on the island.
This is a reciprocal relationship for both parties. The client gets a place to stay, while the
family that hosts the lobster sherman now has access to the benets of a canoa.
One of these benets is increased contact with the mainland. While households
engaged in sh mongering are less likely to visit the mainland, the opposite is true with
households that have a boat borrower living with them. Table 5 shows that boat-bor-
rowing households visit the mainland more often than non-boat borrowing households.
Households with boat-borrowers living with them visit the mainland, on average, roughly
three times more per month more than households without boat-borrowers living with
them (3.15/month for boat borrowers vs. 1.14/month for non-borrowers). In addition,
a higher percentage of boat-borrowing households regularly send sh to Nueva Armenia
than households without boat borrowers (88% for boat borrowers vs. 55% for non-
boat borrowers). These differences indicate that the presence of a boat-borrower in the
household helps to facilitate a livelihood option that allows for mobilizing sh resources
across space.
44 Journal of Latin American Geography
Table 3: Activity differences between households that own cayucos or canoas.
Cayuco (n =
16)a
Canoa (n =
9)
p-
valueb
Number in household 4.2 3.86 .856
Average age of boat (years) 5 11.5 .124
Presence of income activity (percentage)c
traps lobster 56 100 .027*
dives for lobster 50 56 .789
fishes 100 89 .361
buys/sells fish 38 44 1
sells food supplies 19 11 1
sells prepared food 44 11 .182
tourism employment 19 0 .280
rents house 19 11 1
Primary source of income (percentage group)
fishing 63 34 .226
traps lobster 6 44 .041*
buys/sells fish 6 11 1
tourism employment 19 0 .281
very diversified 6 11 .527
Percentage that owns property on Nueva
Armenia 69 44 .671
Percentage that regularly sends fish to Nueva
Armenia 63 33 .226
Average number of times per month visits
Nueva Armenia 1.99 2.75 .561
Percentage with other related households on
Chachahuate 50 44 .789
a Some canoa households also own a cayuco. Cayuco households only own cayucos.
Statistics exclude three households that lack any boats.
b Fisher’s test for percentage variables; Mann-Whitney test for numeric variables
c Defined as: member of household has engaged in this activity in previous month
p-value significance * <.05
45
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
p-value significance
*<.05
Table 4: Logistic regression on household’s probability in engaging in fish-mongering
(buying and reselling fish).
a Fisher’s test for percentage variables; Mann-Whitney test for numeric variable.
p-value significance ** < .01
Table 5: Differences in mainland ties between household by presence/
absenceof boat-borrower living with household.
Dependent variable
Household engages in fish
mongering
N 28
Chi-square 21.048
p-value 0.002
Pseudo-R2 0.739
Independent Variables Coefficient p-value
Constant -2.047 .517
Age of household head 0.001 .981
years living on Chachahuate (household
head) 0.126 .187
times/months visits mainland -1.302 .015*
owns cayuco 1.13 .518
owns canoa 2.57 .211
Households without
boat borrower (n =
20)
Households with
boat borrower (n =
8) p-valuea
Percentage that own
property on Nueva
Armenia 60 75 .669
Percentage that regularly
send fish to Nueva
Armenia 55 88 .194
Average number of
times/month visits
Nueva Armenia 1.4 3.15 .002**
Percentage with other
related household on
Chachahuate 45 63 .678
46 Journal of Latin American Geography
Fish Exchanges
While strong social ties can help people access and mobilize marine resources, the
importance of sh exchanges show how these same resources help to build and maintain
these ties. While certain commercially valuable species such as lobster or snapper were
almost always packed with ice and shipped to the mainland for sale, other less valuable
species were often given away (in addition to being consumed). One day I observed a
sherman come back to the island with a fty pound jewsh (Epinephelus itajara), sell the
bulk of the sh (30 pounds) to the research station on Cayo Menor (where scientists and
guards live), keep some for himself, and give the rest away to seven other households on
the island (eldnotes, 2004). Such distributions were not uncommon. On another day,
I accompanied a sherman who, while shing outside of the reserve, found a dead sea
turtle caught up in his net, along with several small species of shark. Upon returning
to Nueva Armenia, this sherman immediately sold the lobster he found in his net to
a middleman waiting on shore. By the time he made it up river to the village, word had
already gotten back that he had a turtle. Our boat was greeted by a phalanx of people
lining the riverbank, some giving wild hand gestures that they are ready to take home a
piece of meat. The turtle’s head was given to a nephew, the sharks were given away to ve
different people (none of whom were family members), and the rest of the turtle meat
was split evenly with his neighbor, who happened to be Myrna’s sister, Rosa.
When I asked people why they shared their catch with someone, their answers
were usually a terse reply along the lines of “because she’s a good person” or “it’s my
custom’.” Interviews, however, show that this sharing is one of a long-line of close eco-
nomic ties between people. For example, the man who shared most of his turtle meat
with Rosa is a former resident of the island, and long-time go-between for Myrna and
Rosa’s sh mongering activities. He no longer has his own boat (he lost it during hur-
ricane Mitch), and instead relies on borrowing others’ boats so he can set his nets.
These forms of reciprocity show how a number of marine resources have “non-
economic” value, one that is rarely recognized by the reserve’s management plan. The less
commercially valuable species are frequently a form of social currency on both the island
and mainland. Nowhere, however, are these practices recognized in the management plan.
Instead, the management plan’s treatment of marine resources in the context of human
use almost always concerns the most commercially valuable species, with the justication
for the zoning plan centered around maintaining the viability of these species in the re-
serve, with the reserve providing “spillover” benets to the wider regional shing industry.
I point this out here to highlight how the management plan’s “blindness” to many of the
ways in which marine resources can be valuable resulted in a number of restrictions, such
as bans on turtle hunting and the spatial exclusion zones, which have ultimately proven to
be some of the principal sources of tension between residents and the reserve managers.
Social Capital, Livelihoods and Conservation in Context
Households who rely on the resources of the Cayos Cochinos are constantly
maintaining a livelihood geography that is considerably different from the co-manage-
ment spaces of buffer zones and no-take areas that characterize this management plan.
Figure 5 shows a schematic representation of the types of resource ows between the
mainland and the island and the types of ties that island residents maintain with the main-
land. This geography of resource use is dramatically different from the ecosystem-based
geography of spatially-based shing and lobstering zones that is in the management plan
(Figure 2). This suggests an incongruence between the livelihoods of local residents and
the priorities of the management plan that cannot be overcome simply through stronger
engagement between the HCRF and local institutions. Instead, this difference suggests
47
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
a need to re-think the ways in which conservation territories are designed and how local
communities and conservation organizations interact. While I am certainly not the rst
to make this point (cf. Daniels and Bassett 2002; Zimmerer 2000), I wish to contribute
to this critique by offering three insights as to how understanding a household’s social
capital can help inform a more inclusive conservation area.
First, some households on the Cayos Cochinos utilize social capital as a way to
overcome a lack of physical assets and build a livelihood whose activities extend well past
the reserve boundaries. This is illustrated in the case of Myrna’s household, whose mem-
bers rarely sh, but instead, is part of a broader social network in which sh are moved
from the island to the mainland through various social networks. The presence of these
types of households mean that the effects of conservation restrictions not only reach
shing dependent families of the Cayos Cochinos, but also reverberate back through
social support networks that extend to the mainland. This has important implications
for the types of people in a community a conservation organization should engage, and
the manner in which they should be approached. It is necessary but insufcient, for
example, to work with a community shermen’s group. When drafting co-management
plans one should also consider households that might, on the surface, appear to lack the
means to extract resources from a reserve, but are able to do so due to their household
social networks. Taking into account the needs and priorities of such families is a rst
step toward a more constructive engagement between conservation organizations and
local residents.
Second, the effect of social capital is variable and allows households to access dif-
ferent resources in different ways, resulting in restrictions that have highly variable effects
within a community. Young men from the mainland who enter into a patrón relationship
are essentially members of mainland households who use their social networks on the
Cayos Cochinos in order to help their families on the mainland through their lobstering
activities. Fish buyers, however, generally live on Chachahuate all year, and use their con-
nections to the mainland to help build their livelihood on the island. These are groups
that use their social capital to mobilize resources across space with different goals: one
is using the Cayos Cochinos as a supplement to a mainland livelihood, while the other
is using the mainland as a supplement for their island-based livelihood. The implication
for co-management is that it is not enough to simply expand the geographic scope of
community engagement, the HCRF is already engaged with mainland communities, but
rather to incorporate a broader recognition of why and how certain households use
marine resources in the Cayos Cochinos. For example, lobster diving restrictions might
disproportionately affect mainland households who have sons in a patrón relationship.
Targeting these families for input on lobstering restrictions, or for possibilities for alter-
native incomes, could lessen the negative impacts of conservation restrictions.
Third, social capital is an asset that is continually maintained, with some marine
resources serving as a key role in building this asset. This has important implications
for conser vation efforts that are often focused on accommodating the nancial needs
of shermen by formulating detailed management plans for species such as lobster, but
impose blanket restrictions on socially valuable animals like turtles. In the case of the
HCRF there has been a great deal of energy expended on educating local residents on
the importance of preserving nesting grounds of turtles, without recognizing the role
that turtle eggs and turtle meat often play in building social capital. The poaching of
turtle eggs by shermen like Hugo is not just a matter of residents who don’t “get” the
conservation message of the HCRF, but also one of conservation scientists and man-
agers failing to understand Hugo’s motivation for collecting the eggs in the rst place.
Recognizing that marine resources are often times valuable in ways that go beyond sub-
48 Journal of Latin American Geography
Figure 5: Resource flows and ties between mainland and island.
sistence or money is a rst step toward bridging the disconnect that one of-
ten sees between those of conservation managers and those of local residents.
Conclusion
While this paper deals with only one community in the CCMR, the insights pre-
sented here can contribute to understanding why attempts at conservation co-man-
agement have failed around the world. The case of the Cayos Cochinos suggests that
the very same aspects of social capital that are often celebrated by conservation policy
researchers can also become a source of non-compliance and friction when used by
households in the pursuit of maintaining a livelihood. By investigating how a house-
hold’s social capital produces a geographically diverse livelihood, a very different story
49
The Cayos Cochinos Marine Protected Area, Honduras
about the problems of co-management emerge than if I had focused on how social
capital strengthens institutions and local civil society. The complex and diverse patterns
of marine resource use that emerge show how difcult it is to implement a successful
co-management plan that engages with homogenized social entities like “communities”
or “shermen groups.” I am not denigrating the importance of a robust civil society in
engaging with the political process of commons management. What I am suggesting is
that a community with the classic hallmarks of strong social capital, strong community
norms and high levels of trust, does not mean that conservation co-management ef-
forts will necessarily succeed. Instead of producing a robust civil society, these elements
of social capital, when formed and mobilized by individual households can produce
patterns of resource use that are at odds with conventional conservation co-manage-
ment geographies. A similar analytic approach – where social capital is understood at
the scale of the household - can be used in other cases of conservation co-management
in order to show that local residents are often hostile to conservation rules, not be-
cause they fail understand the benets of conservation, but because their geographically
and socially complex uses of resources fails to nd expression in a management plan.
Notes
1 All personal names in this paper are pseudonyms.
2 They are, however, still residents of Nueva Armenia. Since ties to the mainland are
necessary for survival on this island, Chachahuate can be thought of as more of an ex-
tension of the mainland village, than a separate village. The legal status of this island has
been the source of ongoing legal disputes between one non-Garifuna man who claims
sole legal title of a the cay (along with a number of other cays in the Reserve), and the
community who claims that communal title has been granted to residents of Nueva Ar-
menia. This is one of a number of land disputes between Garifuna communities, none
of which held formal land title before 1992, and individuals who have come to own parts
of the Cayos Cochinos. (for more details on this, see Brondo and Woods 2007).
3 While one could, in theory, do this with a smaller cayuco, it is in fact rarely done, since
the fish are usually packed in ice-filled coolers, which require a larger canoa to transport.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people of Nueva Armenia and Chachahuate for their good-
will and patience during my time in their communities. Similarly, the managers of the
HCRF were very helpful and accommodating. This paper benefitted from the insightful
comments of Kendra McSweeney, Becky Mansfield, Bram Tucker, and two anonymous
reviewers on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank Jeff Olson for help with the maps.
All errors remain my own.
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