Is sustainable development a motor or a constraint for the professionalization of the pearl oyster industry in Tahiti?

Abstract

International audienceThis article reports the results of a survey of the pearl oyster industry in French Polynesia territory. Its purpose is to examine the perceptions of the priorities for the development of this industry towards sustainable development. These perceptions were apprehended by a survey of pearl oyster farmers and other stakeholders of the sector (management authorities, scientists). After describing the methodological protocol of these investigations, it comes to confront the priorities chosen by professionals (i.e. pearl farmers) concerning sustainable development, with the perceptions of others stakeholders in the sector. Secondly it comes to build a typology of the priorities of pearl farmers concerning sustainable development. This analysis enables the assessment of the degree of convergence within the sector, which is the base material for defining a shared action plan at the territory scale. This is the first study compiling data of surveys of various professionals and stakeholders of the pearl farming industry in such a large area in French Polynesia

Farmer collectives for more effective agri-environmental schemes? An assessment framework based on the concept of ‘professionalization’

“…Firstly, Scopus, Google Scholar and CAB abstract databases were searched for the key words and synonyms for 'farmer collectives', 'Agri-environmental schemes (AES)' and 'professionalization'. These combinations yielded only two relevant papers (Rey-Valette et al, 2016;Wolf, 2008), both dealing with the professionalization of a group of farmers and other stakeholders as a strategy to increase the resilience of the sector, by developing innovation, improving the learning and knowledge management and improving networking capacity. However, it is questionable whether these are the only categories and characteristics of professionalization and what their value is.…”

Integrated management of pearl culture in French Polynesia in the context of global change: Synopsis of existing results

“…The project designed provided close links between pure-science approaches, including the ecophysiology and genetic diversity of the species (Le Moullac et al 2016a,b ;Blay et al 2016), the interaction of pearl culture with the environment (Lacoste and Mazouni, 2016 ;Le Moullac et al (2016a) and Blay et al 2016), the strategies of businesses with regard to the proposed innovations (Latchere et al 2016 ;Bertucci et al 2016) and risk management, and, finally, the collaborative construction of indicators for monitoring the industry (Rey-Valette et al 2015). In this context, the resultst of the research will contribute to the development of new technologies, strategies, tools and incentives for managing transitions and adaptations of Polynesian pearl culture in the context of global change.Another innovative aspect of the project was to bring together a very wide variety of disciplines which has combined their broad range of skills to answer questions on sustainable and integrated management of pearl culture in French Polynesia.…”