Empowering Insular Communities : Customary Usage and Marine Conservation Approaches. Navigating Between The Islands of La Reunion and Tahiti. ; Usages et conservations des milieux marins : les sociétés humaines à l'ère des changements globaux. Regards croisés sur l'insularité à La Réunion et à Tahiti.

Researchers of all disciplines are taking an interest in the interactions between human and non-human systems since the acceleration of socio-environmental changes, as highlighted by the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Island territories are therefore an asset when it comes to studying this interdependence, since the communities that live there have always found adaptation strategies essential to their living conditions - restricted space, limited resources, geographical isolation, etc.The insular marine environment is a multi-use resource area when considering the diversity of users who interact within it, thus depicting the complexity of interactions between human societies and their environment. In a context where users such as fishermen or tourism providers are directly dependent on ecosystem services (services rendered by nature), it means some human activities start questioning both their social and ecological viability. The lack of complementarity between customary usage of the marine environment may eventually lead to conflicts between stakeholders (human-human conflicts) and with the natural environment (human-non-human conflicts). In this study, we explore the possibility of reconciling socio-economic development and the conservation of natural resources. It is also important to ponder on how local communities perceive marine management tools. Therefore, it is key to identify the factors that will ultimately encourage resource users to invest time and energy in its preservation. To answer all these questions, we present a Grounded Theory approach which cross-referenced the results of ethnographic work carried out in the two insular marine environments, the islands of La Reunion, France and Tahiti, French Polynesia.This interdisciplinary study falls within environmental social sciences, thus we used the method of gathering qualitative data in triangulation. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n=100), extended ethnographic observations over several years ...