The remote island of Tikopia in eastern Solomons, is famous for its intensive agricultural system adapted over the last 3000 years which supports a much higher human population density than is possible with the original slash and burn system used throughout most of the Pacific. This adaptation has been proposed as a conscious response by Tikopians to the constraints to food production, starkly contrasting other situations such as on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

In Collapse (2005), Jared Diamond examines the historical data which underpins Tikopia’s apparent “successes” in the absence of the island’s historical terrestrial ecology or role of fisheries use and management.

In this seminar we will discuss whether ecological management on Tikopia over the last 3000 years represents anything different from other Pacific Island societies; and have the Tikopians applied the same careful approach to their fisheries as they have to their agricultural systems? Our initial results indicate profound implications for contemporary debates about the extent to which Pacific Islanders traditionally managed their terrestrial and marine resources. This in turn has important implications for contemporary fishery management policy development in the Pacific.

Bio:
Mat Prebble is an ARC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology and Natural History, School of Culture History and Languages, College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University.

Simon Foale is an ARC Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.