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Exploring ‘islandness’ and the impacts of nature conservation through the lens of wellbeing

Part of: Humans and Island Environments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2017

SARAH COULTHARD ,
LOUISA EVANS ,
RACHEL TURNER ,
DAVID MILLS ,
SIMON FOALE ,
KIRSTEN ABERNETHY ,
CHRISTINA HICKS  and
IRIS MONNEREAU
SARAH COULTHARD*
Affiliation:
Northumbria University, Department of Social Sciences, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, UK
LOUISA EVANS
Affiliation:
University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK
RACHEL TURNER
Affiliation:
University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK
DAVID MILLS
Affiliation:
WorldFish, Penang, Malaysia ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia
SIMON FOALE
Affiliation:
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia
KIRSTEN ABERNETHY
Affiliation:
University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK
CHRISTINA HICKS
Affiliation:
Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK
IRIS MONNEREAU
Affiliation:
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations – Subregional Office for the Caribbean (SLC), Bridgetown, Barbados
*
*Correspondence: Dr Sarah Coulthard email [email protected]
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Summary

Motivated by growing concern as to the many threats that islands face, subsequent calls for more extensive island nature conservation and recent discussion in the conservation literature about the potential for wellbeing as a useful approach to understanding how conservation affects people's lives, this paper reviews the literature in order to explore how islands and wellbeing relate and how conservation might impact that relationship. We apply a three-dimensional concept of social wellbeing to structure the discussion and illustrate the importance of understanding island–wellbeing interactions in the context of material, relational and subjective dimensions, using examples from the literature. We posit that islands and their shared characteristics of ‘islandness’ provide a useful setting in which to apply social wellbeing as a generalizable framework, which is particularly adept at illuminating the relevance of social relationships and subjective perceptions in island life – aspects that are often marginalized in more economically focused conservation impact assessments. The paper then explores in more depth the influences of island nature conservation on social wellbeing and sustainability outcomes using two case studies from the global north (UK islands) and global south (the Solomon Islands). We conclude that conservation approaches that engage with all three dimensions of wellbeing seem to be associated with success.

Keywords

islandsconservationwellbeing
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 298 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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