Every few years, the elders of Muluk, a tiny coastal community in Papua New Guinea, close a stretch of their reef to fishing. They do this to give these underwater gardens room to breathe, grow and replenish.
We first stumbled on this community-led approach back in 2001. These reefs appeared to be faring remarkably well compared to those further down the coast. This piqued our interest and led us to conduct a global search for other reef ecosystems that were seemingly defying the odds.
While collecting data from nearly 1,700 reefs worldwide, we found over a dozen more sites that had way more fish than expected. These reefs are examples of “bright spots” – places where nature is exceeding expectations given their environmental and social pressures, such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change.
So what are bright spots and why do they matter for conservation? Our new study offers some answers.
Studying success
Bright spots may seem like lucky exceptions to the otherwise bleak rule of ecological decline. We are, after all, living through a sixth global mass extinction of our own making. Today, the risk of plants and animals going extinct is hundreds of times higher than before humans roamed the earth.
Against this depressing backdrop, conservationists have mostly focused on failure: identifying urgent environmental threats with the hope of blunting their worst effects.
But there’s a second, lesser-known approach commonly used across medicine and public health that asks the opposite question: what systems are working against the odds and what lessons could they offer? This is what we call the positive deviance or “bright spots” approach.
What makes a ‘bright spot’?
Since we first brought the bright spots concept to coral reefs in 2016, other scientists have applied this approach to a myriad of other systems and species worldwide.
In West Africa, scientists have identified several critically endangered chimpanzee communities that are thriving, despite steep declines in the wider regional population. These include those living in pristine, inaccessible habitats. However, some are in places where nearby villagers uphold traditions that discourage hunting and make room for people and chimpanzees to co-exist, such as Boé in Guinea-Bissau.
In Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, several First Nations communities have helped the threatened grizzly bear population thrive by placing Indigenous stewardship at the centre of conservation efforts. This includes introducing a trophy hunting ban under both Indigenous and provincial law.
Off the coast of Tasmania in southern Australia, an unlikely alliance of scientists, wildlife managers, and policymakers has protected the vulnerable shy albatross, a species plagued by the threats of disease and global warming. This involved several innovative interventions, including treating albatross chicks for external parasites and building artificial nests for shelter.
Until now these case studies, while heartening, have not offered any clear or concrete wisdom for conservationists to apply elsewhere. That’s where our new study comes in.
We analysed more than 70 studies across the fields of ecology, conservation, sustainability and development to find out how bright spots are identified and what factors give rise to them. We found there are various ways to identify bright spots, with some scientists using statistical models to quantify ecosystems or species that are faring better than expected. Other research relies on experts who shared anecdotes of unexpected success.
Finding patterns
The reasons why a bright spot might exist were even more numerous and varied. As we examined all these bright spots – ranging from hydro-power development to carnivore conservation, food security and more – three patterns kept resurfacing.
Action
We found bright spots often benefited from a specific intervention that was both good for nature and fit for purpose. In the case of coastal communities in Papua New Guinea, this was the unique reef closure system that village elders implemented as needed.
Ability
Bright spots were most common where communities had the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. In Papua New Guinea, strong social ties between youth and elders ensured the village’s reef closure system was passed from generation to generation.
Architecture
When it comes to bright spots, the social and environmental context of a place matters. In Papua New Guinea, the rights of coastal communities to use and manage marine resources are recognised in the country’s constitution. This gives local villagers the power to stop other fishers from depleting their reefs.
Bright spots aren’t the product of magic or chance. They arise in places where the interactions between people, place and practical action enable species and ecosystems to thrive. The existence of bright spots doesn’t make the extinction crisis any less real or urgent. But once we know where and how to find them, they remind us decline is not the only story.
Bing Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Thriving Oceans Research Hub, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney and Joshua Cinner, Professor & ARC Laureate Fellow, Thriving Oceans Research Hub, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
