Coral Protection in Soufrière, St. Lucia

Community Participation Beyond Idealisation and Demonisation

The Soufrière Maritime Management Association (SMMA) is one of the best-known examples of “participatory environmental planning” in the southern hemisphere. As an internationally supported initiative, the SMMA has been subject to regular and comprehensive evaluations that have resulted in largely positive appraisals. The SMMA has also received a range of international prizes and recognitions for its innovation and effectiveness in pacifying user conflicts. 

Our work, however, reopens the case with in-depth evaluative research and comes to the conclusion that previous work and evaluations have considered the SMMA through a limited analytical framework, overlooking critical parts of the “story”. As is typical, power and history have been little called upon to help place this programme within a wider socio-political context. This has led to an incomplete understanding of what “participation” means — how it is felt, perceived, used or ignored by locals. It has also hampered a correct understanding of the long-term challenges that the SMMA faces in delivering environmental results.

Re-opening through several months of fieldwork and over a hundred interviews, has highlighted the need to keep the eyes wide open and acknowledge the negative effects that CP schemes do have on local society and its power structures, despite a well-rounded rhetoric.