The Sustainability Stones: Culturally Embedded Conservation Strategies and Their Vulnerability in Maupiti, French Polynesia

This paper explores culturally embedded conservation strategies through the lens of the traditional agroforestry and fisheries cycles in Maupiti, French Polynesia. By pairing certain breadfruit cultivars with specific fish species, the island’s community created a culinary system that regulates the seasonal consumption of marine resources, making the sustainable use of those resources more likely. While modern pressures such as reduced breadfruit diversity, competition with imported foods, and climate change have weakened these traditional practices, they remain an example of local ecological knowledge guiding conservation. The study highlights the threat of losing sustainable resource-use practices and biodiversity as both biodiversity and traditional ecological knowledge are reduced. Maupiti’s resistance to external development, however, and local community memory offer hope for a potential revival of these practices, preserving both biodiversity and cultural heritage. Reestablishing traditional breadfruit-fish pairings, or forging new ones, could play a vital role in conserving Maupiti’s terrestrial and marine biodiversity.