Protecting or Pilfering? Neoliberal Conservationist Marine Protected Areas in the Experience of Coastal Granada, the Philippines

In recent years conservationist NGOs, policy makers, and scientists in the tropics have expressed a fascination with marine protected areas for simultaneously achieving conservation goals and economic development. Despite their popularity, MPAs often encounter serious implementation challenges due to, at least to some extent, our limited understanding of MPA processes as influenced by neoliberal ideology and practice. By resituating MPAs in debates of neoliberal conservation, this study aims to examine social and economic changes that MPAs bring about in fishing communities. Taking a fishing village in the Philippines as a case study, it shows technocratic solution seeking led to further marginalization of small-scale fishers through unequal distribution of benefits and burdens. Here it is argued that MPAs are prone to exclusionist processes of redefining the value and legitimate users of marine resources, which further limits the opportunities for small-scale fishers to participate meaningfully in resource governance.