Impacts of marine protected areas on livelihoods and food security of the Bajau as an indigenous migratory people in maritime Southeast Asia

Over the last decade, the global conservation agenda has increasingly recognized mobility as an important livelihood and management strategy for indigenous people, acknowledging the need to secure their ongoing access to natural resources within territorial waters and transboundary regions. A growing policy framework exists to support equity, indigenous rights, access to natural resources, participation in management of conservation areas and compensation resulting from loss of access to resources. The rights of indigenous peoples, including sea nomadic or migratory peoples,1 were recognized in 1989 under Article 4 of the International Labour Organization Convention. Various resolutions, recommendations, declarations and principles, formulated at conservation meetings, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and the World Parks Congress (WPC), have acknowledged the need to secure ongoing access for indigenous mobile and nomadic peoples to natural resources within local and transboundary protected areas in order to enable them to continue to hunt, gather and fish for both subsistence and income-generating purposes.2