ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Counting and Co-existing in a coral habitat: Situating conservation dilemmas in the Lakshadweep Islands of India since the 18th century

• In Event: What Are Protocols For? Strategies for Knowing More-Than-Humans in History and Science

English Abstract

This paper traces the historical co-existence of humans with marine creatures in the Lakshadweep Islands of India to understand the current moral dilemmas of habitat conservation. It analyzes how conservation science’s pursuit of ecological balance intersected with community protocols in these coral islands. Following the Indian Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, sea turtles became a protected species. But the islands had witnessed an ‘excess’ of turtle migration since 2000s, that manifested in the overgrazing and disappearance of seagrass meadows. Critical conservationists interpreted this scenario as a limitation of single-species management and as evidence for interventions in one locale generating adverse ecological effects elsewhere. Island residents, who had faced the loss of seagrass and bait fish, mentioned heightened livelihood precarity, while floating turtle populations remained elusive to quantification. Building on Theodore Porter’s (1995) critique of objectivity, I analyze the conservation science’s dilemmas to produce ecological balance through counting turtles and how it led to a distrust in numbers in the process of implementing the conservation law. A historical analysis from available sources since 18th century reveals that turtles were a recurrent, enduring/endearing presence that became valuable commodities in the past. The protocols of care and use were transmitted through proverbs and practical knowledge by the residents. Turtle and cowrie shells were exchanged by the Lakshadweep islanders for essential commodities like rice from the mainland, and caulking with turtle oil enabled the movement of sewn boats, making these “animal materials” (Onaga & Douny 2023) significant to the community. Such consumption and trade were connected to economic precarities and maintenance of trade relations in the Indian Ocean World. The historical analysis of more than human protocols shows that the moral dilemmas in conservation emanate from shifting economic and ecological conditions. They cannot be reduced to global sustainability laws of seeking balance through counting, nor through a blaming of ‘local anthropogenic factors’.

Author

• Lakshmi Pradeep Rajeswary, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science