The influence of urbanization, population growth and modernization
Possibly the least effective and most eroded forms of marine sasi can be seen on Ambon Island,
close to the largest regional urban center and a rapidly developing consumer culture. Here,
out of 22 villages checked, we documented only two villages with marine sasi. Evans et al.
(1997) gathered information from a further five villages, and from these five, there was only
one incidence of marine sasi in one dusun of the town of Tulehu. Thus the known incidence of
marine sasi on rural Ambon Island (not more than 11%) is much lower than on the Lease
Islands, and would be even less if the urban satellite villages were included in the computation.
Towns and satellites of urban centers are more likely to have lost the institution compared to
small rural villages. There also seems to be a correlation between the persistence of sasi and
the size of population, with sasi being most prevalent and active where village population is
between 2,000 and 3,000 persons.
People in the suburbs of Ambon, where there is no marine sasi, are no longer primarily occupied
by farming and fishing. Farmland has been built up and the inner Ambon Harbor, formerly
a rich fishery, is now degraded and polluted to the point that fishers are rarely seen on its
waters. Whereas the isolated coastal villages of Lease Islands are typically dominated by
either Christian or Muslim inhabitants and by a small number of founding clans, the urban
suburbs and satellite villages around the inner harbor are highly mixed in terms of religion
and cultural heritage. It seems that an adat-based institution such as sasi, with its structure
linked to hereditary family lines, cannot survive under such heterogeneous urban conditions.
The impact of urbanization as seen in patterns of loss of sasi seems to have set in early on
Ambon Island, which has historically been the seat of government.
Powerful externalities affect fishers and their resources over time, including new world-market
demands for marine resources, collapsing clove prices, monetary and political instability, and
climate change. Such conditions have lured or driven Maluku people to increase pressure on
marine resources in the past. Thus there are incentives to over-fishing and destructive fishing
which are direct challenges to sasi or any other management institution. Increasing
consumerism has followed the introduction of electricity and mass media to the villages.
Changing values and priorities of the younger generation are seen by sasi practitioners and
villagers, in general, as a threat to social stability and in particular, to adat institutions.
Vulnerability of sasi to externalities
The turbulent cultural and social history of Maluku and the impact of national development
policy (i.e., industrial fisheries expansion, mineral exploitation on small islands) add further
layers of complexity. Because it has no basis in law, sasi is very vulnerable to these externalities.
However, because of its resilience, the institution has so far withstood the pressures.
A major development such as base metal and gold mining proposed for the Lease Islands is
the type of external threat that has the potential to destroy sasi. For example, Haruku is one
of the best examples of active and evolving community-based environmental management.
Here the lompa fish resource, normally protected under sasi rules, is under threat from mining
exploration in the upper watershed. Even though the villagers claim the land is being explored,
they have no power whatsoever to control the exploration. If the mine goes ahead, the villagers
will probably have to be moved and the traditional culture and institutions will be gravely
challenged if not wiped out.
278 An Institutional Analysis of Sasi Laut in Maluku, Indonesia