Branding Wakatobi: marine development and legitimation by science

Abstract

Marine protected areas (MPAs) serve as a potential defense against marine degradation, meeting the conflicting priorities and needs of multiple actors. Biodiversity, conservation, and ecotourism constitute a triad of sustainability tropes in tropical MPAs that intersect with and reinterpret local histories of marine interaction, subsistence, and commercial extraction. Science is implicated in this production of resource space, with the state and other actors conscripting science to legitimate particular visions of sustainability. A content and discourse analysis of science-based communication instruments about Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia reveals a process of place branding an MPA as unique biological-economic resource space. Legitimation of science privileges scientific knowledge to promote neoliberal development as economic sustainability. Legitimation by science produces an MPA identity of a paradise of marine biodiversity worthy of conservation as ecological sustainability. And, the construction and absence of local human subjects affects their role as constrained agents in resource space. The result is weak social sustainability.

Full text

Copyright © 2019 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Tam, C.-L. 2019. Branding Wakatobi: marine development and legitimation by science. Ecology and Society 24(3):23. https://doi.
org/10.5751/ES-11095-240323
Research
Branding Wakatobi: marine development and legitimation by science
Chui-Ling Tam 1
ABSTRACT. Marine protected areas (MPAs) serve as a potential defense against marine degradation, meeting the conflicting priorities
and needs of multiple actors. Biodiversity, conservation, and ecotourism constitute a triad of sustainability tropes in tropical MPAs
that intersect with and reinterpret local histories of marine interaction, subsistence, and commercial extraction. Science is implicated
in this production of resource space, with the state and other actors conscripting science to legitimate particular visions of sustainability.
A content and discourse analysis of science-based communication instruments about Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia reveals a
process of place branding an MPA as unique biological-economic resource space. Legitimation of science privileges scientific knowledge
to promote neoliberal development as economic sustainability. Legitimation by science produces an MPA identity of a paradise of
marine biodiversity worthy of conservation as ecological sustainability. And, the construction and absence of local human subjects
affects their role as constrained agents in resource space. The result is weak social sustainability.
Key Words: legitimation; marine protected areas; place identity; science communication; sustainable development
INTRODUCTION
Marine protected areas (MPAs) serve as a potential defense
against marine degradation, meeting the conflicting priorities and
needs of multiple actors. According to the 2016 Protected Planet
Report, just under 15% of the world’s terrestrial and inland water
systems, 4% of the global ocean, and just over 10% of coastal and
marine areas under national jurisdiction are protected (UNEP-
WCMC and IUCN 2016). Globally, MPAs are expanding in a
collective push to meet Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 for 2011–2020
adopted by signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD), which calls for the global protected area network to cover
at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of
coastal and marine areas by 2020.
Marine or terrestrial, a protected area (PA) is “a clearly defined
geographical space” (IUCN 2017) that can advance sustainability,
commonly articulated as the three pillars or triple bottom line of
environment, economy, and society (Rogers et al. 2008, Halpern
et al. 2013). At their best, PAs promote “long term conservation
of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values”
(IUCN 2017), typically through an ecosystem-based or integrated
multiple-use management regime wherein economic benefits are
derived from nonextractive activities such as ecologically
responsible tourism. The benefits of such trade-offs legitimate
PAs as conservation and economic development spaces. The
feasibility of trade-offs is informed by scientific data on species,
populations, health, and habitats, ideally in concert with local
ecological knowledge and livelihood practices (Mous et al. 2005,
Saarman et al. 2013). Where trade-offs benefit most or all actors,
MPAs help realize the blue economy or blue development, which
Golden at al. (2017) define as an imperative whereby ocean
sustainability is achieved when economic activity is in balance
with the long-term carrying capacity of ocean ecosystems.
However, conservation through tourism may not always achieve
win-win development. This is especially problematic in Southern
countries, which command just a small proportion of global
tourist arrivals and receipts (Hall 2007). In resource-dependent
regions, conservation that benefits the local poor can function as
pro-poor tourism (PPT), offering a viable alternative to
economically driven degradation. PPT should raise the
capabilities, choices, and opportunities of disadvantaged host
populations, but PPT’s ability to reduce poverty gaps are
inconclusive and inconsistent across different southern countries
(see Croes 2012). PPT variants like indigenous tourism tend to
have the effect of othering indigenous peoples, provoking
concerns around image, vulnerability, knowledge, ownership, and
control, among others (Hinch and Butler 2005). This casts doubt
on the effectiveness of globally oriented tourism spaces such as
MPAs to deliver locally appropriate win-win development.
We need to ask: How do underlying extra-local sustainability
discourses influence decisions made about MPA development,
management, ecological and cultural tourism assets and benefits,
and the relative emphasis placed on the sustainability pillars?
What does this mean in areas supporting marine-dependent
indigenous populations, and can these discourses be traced
through published texts? Governments typically communicate
their development and conservation goals for MPAs in publicly
available texts such as management plans and investment-
attracting information. These texts can be analyzed to determine
the prominence of ecological, economic, and, of significance here,
social sustainability of local populations and resource regimes
that predate new MPA spatial arrangements (see, for example,
Djohani 1996, Clifton and Majors 2012). Conceptual limitations
and misrepresentations in policy arenas can serve “to materially
cordon off, delimit, and fix the dynamics of marine-spaces and
always-assembling socio-cultural interactions [and] interrelations”
(Speed Rossiter et al. 2015:144); a probable outcome of these
conceptual and material enclosures is the reproduction of power
relations, the privileging of scientific ways of knowing, and
entrenched marginalization of local actors affected by resource
management.
This paper addresses blue development vis-à-vis sustainability,
science communication, and place identity in the context of
Wakatobi National Park (WNP) in Indonesia, informed by a
hybrid content-discourse analysis of the park’s investment
promotion materials (produced by the Wakatobi Kabupaten
government) and management plan (produced by the Indonesian
1University of Calgary

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Ministry of Forestry). The discussion addresses the legitimation
effects related to science communication in WNP. It is argued that
mutually supportive environmental and economic narratives,
traceable through key government-produced resource management
and marketing literature, produces the Wakatobi brand of a
uniquely valuable biological-economic marine resource space. In
this process of place branding, three mechanisms are at work.
First, legitimation of science privileges scientific knowledge to
promote neoliberal development as economic sustainability.
Second, legitimation by science produces the park’s identity as a
paradise of marine biodiversity, and thus a space worthy of
conservation as ecological sustainability. And third, the
construction and relative absence of human subjects serves to
remove local agency, conceptually and materially, from resource
space. Ultimately, government communication, in the guise of
science communication, coalesces as a social force that privileges
extra-local priorities and narratives of marine space. The relative
inattention to the local social pillar contributes to weak
sustainability.
Blue development, place identity, and science
In recent years, global initiatives and institutions have equated
sustainable development of marine space with blue economy or
blue growth, signaling a strong economic imperative behind
efforts to creatively address the fishing industry, ocean transport,
marine degradation and conservation, and multiscale
coordination and response (World Bank and United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2017). The global
prominence of blue development is reflected in the Aichi
Biodiversity Targets, the “Rio +20” United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development in 2012, the Global Oceans Action
Summit for Food Security and blue growth in 2014, the five Asia-
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Blue Economy Forums
held since 2011, and The Economist magazine’s six World Ocean
Summits since 2012.
Halpern et al. (2013) frame the marine sustainability challenge as
inherent trade-offs to achieve the triple bottom line of
conservation, economic return, and social equity, echoing the
three sustainability pillars. Although blue economy is an unstable
term that speaks to multiple discourses of natural capital, good
business, small island developing states, and livelihoods (Silver et
al. 2015), the concept implies necessary attention to ocean
governance and marine resource management, and a balance
among ecological integrity, economic opportunity, and human
needs. MPAs are key management tools in this regard,
concomitant with marine spatial planning as a system of “zoning
the oceans” along ecosystem-based principles that accommodate
multiple uses (Olson 2010) in demarcated and contained
geographical spaces.
Given the challenges of simultaneously achieving pro-poor
human development, tourism, and conservation, the efficacy of
MPAs merits critical reflection, even where social sustainability
is an official goal. Whereas global and national state, corporate,
and civil society actors invoke economic and ecological
considerations in the blue economy, its social considerations are
harder to enumerate, possibly because they are so contextual and
local. Sustainability fails to address distributive, political, and
cultural dimensions of environmental problems (Hornborg
2009). There is a disconnect between how sustainability and the
blue economy are imagined by elites, and how sustainability
manifests at the local level as specific marine strategies and
outcomes.
MPA place identity
As managed places, MPAs in Indonesia can be identified in large
part with the consumption of tourism experience to replace
income lost through reductions in local and largely extractive
resource-based activities. MPAs as conservation space depend in
part on tourism consumer demand, especially in Indonesia; this
market rationale is mirrored in other areas of conservation and
environmental stewardship. For instance, the sustainable seafood
movement encourages consumers to heed the seafood source and
extraction techniques (Konefal 2013). Neoliberalism prioritizes
individual consumerism; individual agency allows us to make
environmentally informed choices about how we consume
material goods like seafood but also experiential goods such as
biodiversity. Marine space is thus consumed, largely on the part
of SCUBA divers and recreational seekers of sun, sand, and sea
drawn to place brandings such as tropical paradise, wilderness,
or unique biodiversity (Musa 2002, Cameron and Gatewood
2008, McGaurr et al. 2015). Other marine economic activities,
such as alternative and/or value-added fishing industries, also
sustain the blue development of MPAs (Christie et al. 2014).
According to Charles and Wilson (2009), 10 human dimensions
determine the acceptance and ultimate success of MPAs:
objectives and attitudes, “entry points” for introducing MPAs,
effective governance, the role of rights, concerns about
displacement, MPA costs and benefits, the bigger picture around
MPAs, and, of particular concern in this paper, attachment to
place, meaningful participation, and the “people side” of
knowledge. These 10 dimensions speak to the complexities
involved in using MPAs to achieve blue development. An MPA
is the site of tourism-related and other economic benefits that
requires the courting of marine conservationists, leisure-seekers,
investors, and affected local populations. Through such endeavors
at persuasion, the MPA is rebranded as leisure space, economic
development space, and sustainable resource space. In that
multiparty process of rebranding, the emergent MPA identity
may not achieve the tripartite balance among environment,
economy, and society.
State and nonstate actors’ institutionalization of the
sustainability discourse, and their use of cognitive models of
sustainability to define outcomes as largely biological, risk
obstructing substantive change toward meaningful local
participation (Brosius 1999, Loring 2013). Biological cognitive
models are imposed upon a cultural landscape reinterpreted as
development space, which has implications for the local and/or
indigenous communities already inhabiting that space. Pigg’s
(1992) earlier studies of Nepal are instructive. Development, she
found, alters the meaning of the villager in the social imagination,
fusing the local and global for economic purposes. This shapes
the national imagination of the village and casts the city as the
site of progress, social transformation, and modernization.
Globally, conservation efforts through the establishment of
terrestrial and marine PAs are part of an ecological modernization
vision that reinterprets the role and legitimacy of local indigenous
actors as spatially bound identities who need to be included in
the project of progress.

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Ultimately, identity politics are implicated in spaces of leisure
(Williams 2002). These spaces intersect with and are reshaped by
narratives held by central actors such as policy makers, investors,
and consumers (von Heland and Clifton 2015). In global parlance,
the terms blue development, blue economy, and blue growth are
used interchangeably, lending credence to the assertion that the
desire to know nature in economic terms has “reverberated
through environmental policy, funding and program
implementation” (Suarez and Corson 2013:65). Global
conservation and development discourses emerge and are
maintained through the coordinated efforts of international
environmental policy institutions, organizations, activists,
academics, and transnational capitalist and managerial classes
(Corson et al. 2013). Marine enclosures such as MPAs are one
product of these intersecting discourses.
Legitimation and science communication
For MPAs, the integration of ecological, economic, and social
sustainability remains problematic, especially for local fishery-
dependent actors, challenging the win-win discourse on
conservation and development (Chaigneau and Brown 2016). As
spatial entities, MPAs not only define and occupy significant
ecosystems, but they are the locales where nonhuman and human
populations experience, adversely or otherwise, the effects of
enclosure, inclusion, and expulsion arising from new MPA
arrangements such as multiple-use zones, livelihood adaptation,
and financial investment (Chen and Lopez-Carr 2015). Marine
biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability, propelled by the
global drive to meet Aichi Biodiversity Targets and supported by
science, become entangled in the pursuit of productivity and
economic development, not only in service to national economic
interests but also to ease the hardships caused by the MPA-
associated loss of local and traditional resource-based
livelihoods.
Science provides evidence of the abundance, variety, and
uniqueness of wild species and helps determine threats to
sustainability, thus guiding integrated or ecosystem-based
approaches that reconcile social-ecological complexity and
conflict; at the same time, collection of reliable statistics is
particularly challenging in marine-resource rich nations such as
Indonesia with its dispersed multigear and multispecies fisheries
(Mous et al. 2005). Faced with the ecological and political
interventions of higher authorities, local communities must adapt
and seek benefits amid regime change, by turns responding as
agents, as subordinates, or as a combination of both.
Environmentality, the enduring relationship between government
and subjectivity, suggests that changes in government will spur
changes in environmental practices and beliefs among social
actors, mediated through the exercise of power (Agrawal 2005).
The language of policy and management, on the other hand, fails
to account for power, conflicts, and inequalities (Hornborg 2009).
Policy makers reveal their reasoning, decisions, and strategies
within communication instruments such as management plans
and investment brochures. The absence or framing of local and
indigenous practices and priorities within those same documents
may also reveal insights about the role that policy makers imagine
for people as development subjects.
Although capital and modernity have long been scrutinized as
destructive forces against ecological integrity, from a critical
political ecology perspective, the construction of discourses,
knowledge, and science is also implicated in environmental
struggles (Forsyth 2003). Science and its deployment through
various communication instruments and fora is often expected to
influence policy decisions on the management of environmental
goods and services (Gewin 2015, McGreavy et al. 2015) but
communication also involves complex interactions linked to trust,
context, networks, and stakeholder groups (Longstaff and Yang
2008, de Nooy 2013). Communicating science effectively is a
chronic challenge, putting the onus on scientists to demonstrate
ethical behavior and have unassailable data (Likens 2010). Science
is often jargon-laden and may not be understandable to or
perceived as relevant by the parties it affects; audiences, such as
politicians, professional media, and agency personnel, have
different expectations about how messages are conveyed and the
level of technical detail they contain (Likens 2010). Nor can
science easily retain its perceived neutrality amid complex
politico-economic and racial histories that situate it in opposition
to indigenous knowledges and the well-being of disadvantaged
populations, as shown in South African fisheries (Green 2015).
Science communication involves not only its content and method
of delivery, but also the communicator and her/his/its motivations
and allegiances. As this study shows, government can coopt
science communication to legitimate its own ecological
modernization vision and the imagined role of local
communities.
Christie (2004) notes that biological success in Southeast Asian
MPAs is usually accompanied by social failure, largely because
the social dimension of MPA planning and implementation is
poorly acknowledged or heeded. Likewise, the local success of
policy interventions depends on a combination of scientific rigor,
a concern for the human condition, and sustained engagement
with stakeholders ranging from governments to farmers (Zheng
and Wang 2014). As Augustine and Dearden (2014) advocate, an
integrated, context-based approach cognizant and sympathetic
to local realities and local ways of doing could enhance the success
of MPAs. Good communication, clear, respectful, substantive,
and mutually understood by experts and the lay public, is critical
to such an integrated approach. Science communication affects
how marine environments are produced, reconstituted, and
consumed as MPAs. With reference to WNP, was its place identity
changing, and was this transition reflected in the biological data
used to define its value and in the promotional efforts to attract
international interest to the park? Did the park management plan
provide a more balanced vision of the three pillars of
sustainability compared to the investment-attraction instruments?
These questions concern legitimation of WNP’s identity.
“Reasoning” and “giving reasons” are central to a communicative
process that legitimates political institutions (Steffek 2009).
Discursive legitimation, wielded by actors with differential power,
is the social mechanism through which legitimation functions. It
follows that science gains its persuasive power when it is
communicated; marine science has power to shape marine space
by legitimating resource and environmental management tools
such as MPAs. Legitimacy is “a specific quality ascribed to
government, or systems of governance, which generates
compliance with norms, rules, and political decisions” and implies
collaboration (Steffek 2009:314). Delegitimation occurs when the
legitimacy of institutions, including traditional resource

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management regimes, is challenged. Legitimation struggles are
common to protected areas because of the diverse and competing
actors, priorities, and management strategies involved (Jamal and
Eyre 2003). It can be inferred that science is implicated in
legitimation struggles over the purpose and identity of MPAs.
METHODS
Location
In the last two decades, the 1.39 million-hectare Wakatobi
National Park (see Fig. 1) has been reborn as both national MPA
and as Wakatobi Regency within the Indonesian province of
Southeast Sulawesi. It is an historically economically
disadvantaged region and the new government is actively
pursuing economic development. Established in 1996 after a
program of data collection by marine biologists on the health of
fish species and coral reefs, WNP has been dogged by local
community grievances, largely around restricted access to
traditional fishing grounds, confusion over the legality of certain
spaces and harvesting practices, and lack of alternative livelihood
options (Berdej et al. 2015, WWF 2018). Community disaffection
with the original WNP management regime, especially as it related
to livelihood restrictions, was a key impetus behind the rezoning
of WNP in 2007, involving public consultations among its roughly
100 villages and 100,000 inhabitants.
Fig. 1. Wakatobi National Park.
WNP is one of Indonesia’s most celebrated MPAs, securing the
status of United Nations Global Biosphere Reserve in 2012.
Marine sustainability is of critical importance to Indonesia, the
world’s largest archipelago. Its coastal and marine economic
activity accounts for one-quarter of gross domestic product and
employs more than 20% of the country’s workforce; some 65% of
the population lives within 50 kilometers of the coastline (Dahuri
2006). WNP is part of the six-nation Coral Triangle Initiative, a
647-million-hectare ecosystem at the confluence of the Indian
and Pacific Oceans that supports 76% of the world’s known coral
species, 37% of the world’s fish species, and 120 million people
(CTI 2019a). Indonesia’s push for intraregional cooperation in
CTI was driven by “the critical need to safeguard the region’s
marine and coastal resources,” of which 95% of the coral reef
ecosystem is at risk (CTI 2019b). There are four main islands in
WNP: Wangi-Wangi, Kaledupa, Tomia, and Binongko, with
associated ethnic groups.
In Wakatobi government literature, WNP is branded as the
physical and spiritual “Heart of the Coral Triangle,” a reference
to both Indonesia’s leadership within CTI and WNP’s location
in CTI’s proximate physical center. Marine biodiversity has
become Wakatobi’s brand identity, maintained by discursive
mechanisms that extoll its environmental-as-economic value,
supported by science as evidence. Dive tourism is a growing
business, and value-added alternative marine industries are
encouraged, underpinning continued expansion of seaweed
aquaculture, seafood snacks, and artificial fishing lures. Although
politicians, managers, and NGOs speak an extra-local narrative
of sustainable development, the author’s direct communication
with villagers unearthed proportionately more negative than
positive accounts of the park’s impacts on local communities (see
Tam 2015). The villagers supported the idea of sustainability, but
disputed whether sustainability was achieved in practice at the
community level. It appeared that, amid WNP’s developmental
transition, it was largely represented as ecological space and
economic space, but its significance as social and cultural space
was diminished. This study, focusing on three communication
instruments prepared by Wakatobi authorities, is an attempt to
reconcile the dominant local vs extra-local narratives that the
author encountered.
Data collection and analysis
Since the 2007 rezoning, Wakatobi revised the park management
plan officially based on community consultation, aided by a
collaboration in place since 2002 between WWF and The Nature
Conservancy (TNC) to assist the WNP authority to “implement
effective management strategies informed by the best science and
local socio-economic realities” (WWF 2018). Initiatives include
a zoning system, awareness raising, management training,
economic and community development, fisheries, management
and policy reform, and species monitoring. As part of its
development pitch, the Wakatobi government produced an
investment book for distribution to potential investors and a
PowerPoint slide roadshow to sell WNP’s multiple attributes. The
author conducted a discourse-content analysis of the
communication instruments—management plan, investment
book, and slide show—to determine the manifestations of marine
science, economy, and people.
The author, an Indonesian speaker, conducted secondary data-
gathering and fieldwork for a new study in Wakatobi National
Park in 2017, as well as casual conversations and 30
semistructured interviews in WNP with villagers, NGOs, and
government staff during three site visits between 2007 and 2013.
She sought to determine whether villagers’ negative experiences
(Tam 2015, von Heland and Clifton 2015) could be corroborated
through analysis of the Wakatobi government’s own published
literature. For a working typology, she interrogated the
communication of science with four phenomena in mind: (i) the
methods/instruments of communication, (ii) the substance of the

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Table 1. Content in three communication instruments in Wakatobi National Park (WNP).
Key Images and Narratives of Wakatobi Proportion and/or frequency of topical content
2009 Slide show 2010 Investment book 2008 Management plan
Total Units
36 slides 45 pages 110 pages
Biodiversity/natural beauty High Medium Low
People as cultural assets High Medium Low
Tourists as consumers High None None
Demographic data Medium High Medium
Scientific data High High Very high
Tourism economy Medium High High
Fishery & marine economy Medium High Very high
Local livelihoods Low Low Low
communicated science, (iii) the active and passive voices in
communication, and (iv) the location of science as communicated
knowledge.
Content analysis of text and images identified frequent and
dominant words, phrases, and themes. The documents analyzed
were the 36 slides in the Wakatobi government’s English-language
presentation to investment and government bodies, the 45-page
Indonesian-language investment book produced by the regional
development agency, and the 110-page WNP resource
management plan. For the management plan, passages
highlighted in the content analysis were then run through the free
online tool Google Translate, followed by manual review of the
generated translations. Using thematic coding, the author
searched for representations of different place and people
identities including masyarakat (community), manusia (human),
nelayan (fisherman), pegawai (employee/worker), ilmu (science),
tradisi (tradition), pengetahuan (knowledge), budaya (culture),
wisata (tourism), and mata pencaharian (livelihood). The author
also drew insights from her interviews (namely, poor
communication with villagers and local economic hardships
related to the park use zones), and was mindful of the missing
actors and spatial imaginaries, i.e., social constructs of space and
its contained objects, in the three communication instruments in
question. Using discourse analysis, she looked for constructions
and absences of those same identities.
This hybrid discourse-content analysis supports the idea that the
analysis of informal documents can complement other research
methods and data (Hutchins and Stormer 2013) such as
participant-observation, interviews, and public hearing
transcripts (or resource management plans) in order to excavate
place identity and the processes through which it is formed. This
multiperspectival approach mixes quantitative and qualitative
data (Feltham-King and Macleod 2016) but is also
methodologically informed by an ethnographic sensibility
(Altheide 1987, Anderson 2012, Townsend 2013, Scholl et al.
2014). The point is to sift through numeric and narrative data to
interrogate the privileging of science, its use in economic strategy,
and the way it is implicated in social constructions of marine space
and peoples. This is critical given the conservation rationale that
an MPA’s touristic value can largely replace its extractive value,
supplemented by investment in alternative marine livelihoods.
This MPA place branding, to adapt King (2005:355),
“perpetuates the distinction between those who produce and
those who consume, and as some people catch fish for many
others, most people experience the ocean in absentia.
Unchallenged by conflicting experiences, the public is potentially
able to imagine an ocean ecosystem without humans.” The results
suggest, if not the complete absence of local humans in the WNP
communication instruments, then certainly a lack of recognition
or thinness of engagement with socially complex communities
with their own histories of marine spatial interaction.
RESULTS
Results suggest that communication of science is effective in
disseminating information about WNP’s biological diversity and
its blue growth potential, referenced in the trope “Heart of the
Coral Triangle” invoked in government literature and by
government staff in conversation. Attention to social
sustainability is low in investment-oriented communication
instruments, which was not a surprise. Of greater concern is the
relative space allocated to drawing out the complexities of local
livelihoods in the WNP management plan, and the widespread
portrayal of local peoples as cultural tourism assets. The topical
content of the three communication instruments are summarized
in Table 1, with indicative terms for the relative weighting of key
images and narratives of WNP.
Investment slide show
The investment slide show was designed in 2009 as a persuasive
presentation for delivery to other government officials and
potential investors by Wakatobi’s bupati, the elected head of the
regency. Its 36 slides were dominated by three narratives of WNP.
These were the natural beauty of WNP, its interesting cultural
groups often pictured performing a traditional ethnic dance, and
tourism (represented by a female Caucasian model positioned in
scenes of white sand beaches, clear blue waters, and/or palm trees).
Of 58 images, 23 were nature photos and six were maps. The
remaining half of the photos consisted of nine images of the
Caucasian model, five images of historic sites or crafts, 14 images
of local people as cultural tourism assets (see Fig. 2), and one
image of a fishmonger’s wares with shoppers in the background.
Measured in terms of proportion of the slides, a high amount of
content was the equivalent of six to seven slides, medium amount
was two to three slides, and low amount was negligible at a fraction
of one slide. Text-free slides were counted as separate units from
slides with textual content. Textual details focus on (i) the two
leading sectors of “fisheries and marine” and “tourism,” (ii)

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biophysical data on coral reefs, islands, and species and fishery
production estimates, and (iii) tourism information such as
accommodation, cultural spectacles, and diving activities.
Fig. 2. A slide showing cultural tourism assets.
Investment book
The 45-page black-and-white Profile of Investment Opportunities,
commonly referred to as the investment book by civil servants,
was published in 2010 by the Wakatobi development agency,
BAPPEDA. Its full-color cover folds out to a map of WNP
overlaid on its edges with nature and people photos and textual
highlights of the economic potential of fishery and marine,
agriculture, forestry, and tourism (culture, beach, and sea). Within
the first seven pages are a general description of Wakatobi regency
including its geography, people (roughly one page long with one
paragraph on population and three paragraphs on local
educational attainment, both accompanied by a table), and other
concise details about facilities, infrastructure, and the legal
structure of Wakatobi. The biggest section comprises 27 pages
on investment potential and opportunities, primarily asserting its
biophysical resources for extraction, supported by 25 small
photos of individual fish species, 17 photos of underwater and
beach scenes, plus four photos of coral farming, with 16 pages on
tourism of which five pages feature sea and beach potential and
11 pages feature cultural potential accompanied by 22 photos of
historical sites, craft making, ethnic dances, and local boats and
buildings. In terms of pages committed to each phenomenon, a
high amount of content filled at least 11 pages or 24% of the
book, a medium amount of content was between 2 and 10 pages,
and very low was less than one page.
WNP management plan
The 110-page Wakatobi National Park Management Plan
1998-2003 (2008 Revision) states in its Chapter I Preface (pages
1–4) that WNP was established as a buffer system to secure
biological conservation and guarantee sustainable development
and sustainable community livelihoods. The Chapter II Area
Description (pages 5–31) commits three pages to regional history,
15 pages to the biophysical system, two pages to physical travel
logistics, one page to human demographics, two pages to the
“socio-economic and cultural conditions of the community,” two
pages to institutional structure, and four pages to human
resources, e.g., marine patrols, and supporting facilities. Chapter
III Policy (pages 32–36) lists social sustainability challenges such
as participation, economic and community empowerment,
poverty and unemployment. Chapter IV Vision and Mission of
Wakatobi National Park Management (pages 37–45) asserts a
vision of the “realization of a steady, dynamic and sustainable
[WNP] that can provide benefits to the community and region in
a sustainable manner,” largely through a zoning system to regulate
multiple economic activities, sound waste management, and
development of marine tourism. Chapter V Analysis and
Protection (pages 46–87) focuses on ecological pressures
including destructive local fishing practices such as the use of
explosives and chemicals. Chapter VI Plan of Action (pages 88–
97) includes two pages on a program to raise community
awareness, increase participation, foster community empowerment
in and around WNP, and develop an information and
communication system for the wider community (national and
international) as a medium of education, counseling, and
promotion. The Chapter VII (pages 98–110) Conclusion
summarizes the management plan in a large matrix of five tables.
Attention to pengembangan partisipasi masyarakat (development
of community participation) is captured in one short paragraph
less than one-third of page 96 stating: “The development of
community participation is intended to encourage an increasingly
active role of the community in the field, so that the management
of WNP becomes more effective and efficient and fully supported
from the community and all parties. This is realized through clean
beach activities, mangrove tree planting and preventive public
security.” In sum, only about two pages of text address community
engagement (less than 2% of the page count) and seven pages to
general social considerations or demographic data (6.5% of total
pages), compared to 75 pages (68%) to aspects of the biophysical
system and tourism, fishery and marine economic management.
Low visibility of social sustainability
Low visibility is signified by absence from the government
literature. There is low visibility of local populations as active
agents with their own histories of occupation, resource tenure,
and adaptation. The slide show and investment book demonstrate
a strong bias toward WNP as a biologically unique space that can
be exploited for its tourism potential and fishery and marine
potential. The management plan devotes the greatest attention to
marine ecological resources and, to lesser extent, social
sustainability challenges such as destructive fishing practices,
local dependence on fisheries, and the need for alternative
livelihoods.
Wakatobi’s assets are captured in its brand identity “Heart of the
Coral Triangle.” WNP is highlighted as a rectangle in the map of
the Coral Triangle on the cover of the investment book (Fig. 3)
and in the title of the slide show (Fig. 4). In the park management
plan, the heart is shown as a large red dot on a map on page 11
of the 110-page document. The heart is a reference to Indonesia’s
political place in CTI, WNP’s physical place in the Coral Triangle,
and its social-ecological place at its center. In all three instruments,
local people are portrayed largely as cultural commodities or
development subordinates that can be mobilized for tourism.

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Fig. 3. Cover of investment book.
Fig. 4. Title of slide show.
DISCUSSION: SCIENCE OF BLUE BRANDING
The present study exposes two tensions at the intersection of
communication and place. The first tension is the deployment,
i.e., the communication, of science to legitimate the
establishment of an MPA and its management regime. This
process, reinforced by partnerships between state and
environmental NGOs, exemplifies the environmental institutionalization
that Brosius (1999) warns about. The second tension is the triad
of science-connected tropes with which MPAs are identified,
biodiversity, conservation, and ecotourism, and how these tropes
serve to reinforce an outward-oriented 3S “sun, sand, and sea”
aesthetic that intersects with and reinterprets local histories of
marine interaction, subsistence, and commercial extraction.
These tensions in science communication relate to how WNP is
constructed through information, investment, and resource
management materials, thereby creating a place identity or
“Wakatobi brand” for public consumption. For tropical MPAs,
biodiversity, conservation, and ecotourism constitute a powerful
triad of sustainability tropes justifying the enclosed space of the
MPA; blue development driven by tourism market demand is
intrinsic to MPA place identity.
As Hutchins and Stormer (2013:35) argue in their study of online
responses to newspaper articles concerning a land-use
controversy, “identity is a changing and traceable element of place
that is responsive to and interacts with system disruptions, like
land-use events [such that] texts performatively (re)arrange
identity as part of the rezoning proposal event itself.” This study
of WNP communication instruments demonstrates that the
communication of a resource management regime and the
justification of that regime is supported by science such that a
new marine resource identity emerges even as other identities of
place and place-specific peoples are suppressed. This study
demonstrates the usefulness of a methodology that examines how
texts serve as discursive practices that shape marine users’,
investors’, and managers’ relationships with marine resource
access, recreation, and economy amid the social system disruption
represented by the establishment of an MPA and a new
government in Wakatobi.
Visual and textual narratives
The MPA as a new form of enclosure in the blue economy must
be justified on the basis of available scientific data. Marine science
underpins all three communication instruments studied here. As
a result, the first narrative of marine biodiversity and natural
beauty is powerfully anchored by data on species diversity and
WNP’s central place at the Heart of the Coral Triangle. To justify
the inevitable curtailment of older local regimes of resource use,
the economic promise of Wakatobi emerges as a second narrative,
a promise made on the basis of scientific estimates of marine
species productivity. Finally, as marine space is enclosed, so too
are its human inhabitants, whose ethnicities align with the four
main islands; various seafaring and coastal communities also
identify with their origin villages and their particular island of
residence within WNP. The result is a mixture of cultural groups
with different languages, customs, dress, and cuisines that are
reimagined, in the new MPA economy, as “cultural assets.” In this
way, touristic space and culture become the third narrative evident
in WNP.
Legitimation of science
Evidence from the three communication instruments suggests
that local knowledge is poorly integrated or unsought, such that
science is legitimated as the knowledge that matters. Effectively,
local knowledge is discursively delegitimated by its absence or
thinness in key WNP management policy and marketing
documents.

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The prolific use of marine biotic data in all three communication
instruments reinforces the perceived value of science against the
absence of traditional knowledge. In the slide show and
investment book, there is no pretense to address local people as
ecological or economic agents, and likewise local and traditional
knowledge simply are not invoked. In the management plan, local
people are acknowledged as economic actors but there is no hint
of the knowledge they can offer; their engagement in knowledge
is imagined in the role of information receivers who will become
more “aware,” “participative,” and “empowered” through a
management program to integrate them into an MPA not of their
design. Marine science is juxtaposed against and often
methodologically ill-equipped to collect data about social
phenomena (Christie 2004) such as local/traditional ecological
knowledge, customary marine tenure, social networks, and
relations across marine space, and uneven access to political
participation.
This study sheds light on discursive legitimation, defined as the
social mechanism through which legitimation functions; its key
participants, in order, are (i) state representatives such as
politicians, civil servants, and diplomats, (ii) experts, (iii) activists
and lobbyists, (iv) journalists, and (v) citizens (Steffek 2009). The
authorial voices, especially in highly technical matters, belong to
bureaucrats, technocrats, and experts. Whether in poor
communities such as WNP or among affluent, educated, engaged,
and democratic public spheres such as the Canadian Rockies
mountain park destination of Banff, “human participants may
be subjected, shaped and sometimes enabled, sometimes
constrained, by legitimation struggles between environmental,
business, park and other public interests” (Jamal and Eyre 2003).
The net result is the potential absence and incoherency of a
broader public discourse on a given environmental issue, with the
average citizen in the local community coming last.
Legitimation by science
As marine policy tools, MPAs are discursively embodied in
representations of space, i.e., policies and practices expressed as
park management plans, investment brochures, and investment
attraction materials. Such representations reimagine and rebrand
historically lived marine spaces as conceived spaces of sustainable
development made possible through conservation. WNP is valued
by powerful institutions as a marine space of unparalleled
biodiversity and uniqueness, where conservation is under threat
and management is the remedy (von Heland and Clifton 2015).
Articulations of place identity are traceable through
communication in particular locations and scenes that are, in
effect, constantly reassembling as humans interact with marine
space (Hutchins and Stormer 2013, Speed Rossiter et al. 2015).
Thus, how science is deployed communicatively has implications
for which place identities emerge, whether unique biodiversity,
economic growth opportunity, or global/local marine commons.
In MPAs, when science is established as valuable, it legitimates
the economic potential of natural resources. The economic
prerogatives within sustainable marine development are neatly
reflected in the interchangeability of the terms blue development,
blue economy, and blue growth. MPAs thus become managed
development space under new regimes of zoning and enclosure,
which may inspire unhappiness among locals confused by the
boundaries and legality of their activities at different sites and
times. It is vital to ask how the communication of science,
sustainability, and economy affects the production of marine
space. In WNP, economic sustainability is legitimated by science
and its communication in terms of content about environment,
economy, and society, and the relative absence of content about
the diversity and complexity of local people who already
command knowledge of their marine world.
Science is implicated in representations of space, and flawed
science communication can affect imaginaries of marine space
and space-defining policy and practice in ways that harm the
sustainability of pre-existing social systems in an MPA. The
question here is how the communication of science discursively
affects marine space and the legitimation of marine actors who
have potentially conflicting priorities for that space. This has
implications for the role of science in the social production of
resource space and how the state and other actors conscript
science to legitimate particular translations of sustainability.
Biodiversity, conservation, and ecotourism constitute a powerful
triad of tropes in this discursive process of legitimation by science.
Theses tropes are vital to the place branding of MPAs like
Wakatobi.
Construction and delegitimation of community
The legitimation of science and the legitimation of enclosure and
neoliberal economic growth by science, while perfectly rational in
the branding of MPAs like Wakatobi as win-win development
spaces that promote ecological and economic sustainability, are
troubling amid the absence of complex and nuanced local
identities and the externally produced construction of
touristically valuable local identities. An integrated approach is
incomplete without context-based knowledge (Augustine and
Dearden 2014). Legitimation of and by science risks reproducing
the frequent failure of scientists and managers to engage
effectively with local populations or to understand the worldviews
that shape their interactions with marine space (Clifton and
Majors 2012, Tam 2015).
There are two imaginaries or false visions of Wakatobi. One
relates to King’s (2005) observation that the oceans as a global
concern reflects an ontology of a “contemplated” ocean that is
human-free and should be appreciated from afar, and in which
certain fishers may be perceived as transgressing on the “natural”
boundary between humans and the environment. As such, in
Wakatobi, the immediacy of fishers’ livelihoods and other
interactions with the ocean are regulated and legitimated by the
design of the MPA, biological science, and extra-local economic
priorities. In other words, this is a Wakatobi imagined from afar,
by forces who do not experience it as their everyday reality. This
imaginary delegitimates the direct interactions that maritime
peoples have with the ocean.
The second imaginary emerges most clearly in the two investment
communication instruments, and to an extent in the management
plan: local communities are discursively identified as cultural
commodities. Marine peoples are idealized as a contemplated
product in a contemplated ocean. Or, in economic parlance, locals
are another factor of production alongside biophysical marine
resources; together they form the Wakatobi advantage and are
part of a package to attract investors and tourists. This reflects
the economic rationality behind blue development. As
contemplated products, where is local people’s voice? What would
it say?

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The WNP management plan proffers a more nuanced imaginary
of Wakatobi’s residents compared to the blatant economic
narrative of the slide show and investment book. But the
management plan also predates the other two instruments, whose
existence and tone arguably take their direction from the way
marine sustainability is presented in earlier government
documents. Therefore, the relative inattention to local realities
and complexities in the management plan destabilizes the social
sustainability pillar in WNP. Although the management plan
recognizes the poverty and marine dependence of local
populations and the need to help them, the treatment of these
issues is cursory. It is not robust in social scientific terms. Marine
biotic data shape the identity of WNP, but in concert with
government economic priorities and promotional efforts to
attract investment and visitors, and the introduction of new forms
of economic activity in a previously remote and economically
disadvantaged area.
In the branding of Wakatobi, legitimation of and by science
intersects with the construction of people as tourism products
and their absence as active actors in marine space. The audience
exposed to the WNP management plan, the travelling slide show,
and the investment book is no wiser to the stories of local people
as livelihood practitioners, environmental stewards and
managers, agents of transformation, or decision makers. Marine
place is deidentified as lived social space and legitimated as
ecological and economic space.
CONCLUSION
Scientific knowledge is a communicative force that shapes the
management of resilient ecosystems, by turns juxtaposed
unfavorably against or integrated conscientiously with local
ecological knowledge. Science is implicated in the way resource
space is managed and produced. It is implicated in the branding
of conservation space. We need to interrogate whether and how
scientific knowledge is conscripted into various imaginaries of
place and the priorities of the governing bodies that, as
development actors, legitimate conservation spaces. Biodiversity,
conservation and ecotourism constitute a powerful triad of tropes
in a science-based narrative in this process of legitimation.
An analysis of information and investment materials related to
Wakatobi National Park reveals that mutually supportive
environmental, political, and economic actors control the
production of the protected area as an economic and ecological
success story. In a “sustainable development” transition,
conservation space is identified foremost as physical and
economic space, while local populations who experience these
areas as lived space are commodified and rebranded as one among
many products to be managed, harvested, and consumed, raising
questions about social sustainability. WNP demonstrates that a
successful branding of conservation as development depends on
three things: first, strong science to demonstrate need for and
value of conservation; second, established, emergent, or
cultivated market demand for conservation; and three, an export
orientation for conservation-friendly development. Export
orientation has as its mandate the purpose to exploit comparative
advantage and increase earnings through foreign consumption of
local goods. In WNP, those goods are aesthetic (natural beauty),
biophysical (marine fishery and resources), and cultural (people).
The communication of science contributes to imaginaries of place
in the blue economy through the methods and instruments of
communication, the substance of the communicated science, the
active and passive voices in communication, and the position of
science as communicated knowledge.
Responses to this article can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/responses.
php/11095
Acknowledgments:
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their
careful observations and insightful suggestions, She gratefully
acknowledges the support of the University of Calgary, University
Research Grants Committee, which provided funding for this study.
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