The Tambu Symposium

Islands represent a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface but support disproportionate amounts of biodiversity and endemism. These faunas are also highly vulnerable to extinction.

In the East Melanesian Islands Biodiversity Hotspot, fewer than 5% of terrestrial lands are government protected areas, and more than 90% of terrestrial areas in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are customary land. Customary conservation areas that are set and maintained by culturally decreed tambu or tabu areas, therefore, likely play a critical role in conservation. However, little information is available in the literature to integrate the fundamentals of customary management systems for their recognition in Western conservation models. Moreover, studies that have considered customary management practices in Melanesia have been almost entirely focused on marine systems and resources.

In this symposium, we will bring together Indigenous knowledge-holders from across Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia) to advance insights into the status, structure, efficacy, strengths and weaknesses of customary management protocols in tropical island systems.

Symposium attendees will bring with them traditional knowledge of the status of existing tambu systems and sites in their respective countries. Through this symposium, we will forge a way to acknowledge, support, and reinvigorate tambu conservation through government and/or non-government channels. We will build a network of practitioners that will advocate for traditional knowledge and customary management systems to be included in global conservation action targets.

We aim for this to be the beginning of a larger body of work and we will seek additional funding to 1) collect additional data on tambu systems in each country using questionnaires, 2) collect biodiversity data to contrast tambu areas with unprotected areas, and 3) advocate for better recognition of tambu systems at the levels of national governments and international forums such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.