Mark Collins

Mark Collins is a research fellow in anthropology at the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, recipient of a post-doctoral grant from the Fyssen foundation, and associate researcher at the Credo. He specialises in environmental anthropology and marine anthropology, and has been working in Papua New Guinea since 2019, where he has carried out over 17 months of fieldwork. His research is focussed on relations between the inhabitants of the island of Lavongai and animals of the sea. He has collaborated with Indigenous civil society partners in New Ireland province on projects related to the documentation and understanding of cultural practices related to the ocean.

Project 

Title: Threats to marine biocultural diversity in the Bismark Sea (Papua New Guinea)

In Oceania, knowledge of coastal and marine environments is indispensable to Indigenous populations for sustaining human and non-human life. The people who live in this island region and the marine environments they inhabit are however under threat from multiple sources of violence including destructive primary resource extraction, sea level change, and loss of biodiversity. Together, these forms of violence are degrading established and functional relations between human societies and the living environment. On all shores of Papua New Guinea’s Bismarck Sea the situation is urgent in this regard, as impacts from sea-level rise, ocean acidification, run-off from mining and logging, and overfishing are already being felt. In the medium term, potential ecological and social consequences of deep seabed mining (DSM) also loom, as “Solwara 1”, the world’s first DSM exploration, is underway there. The research project is focussed in two sites located on both sides of this sea. It applies an anthropological lens to document and understand the threats to coastal societies and marine environments, collaborating with local non-governmental organisations and Indigenous ecological experts. It aims to produce knowledge and educational tools that can be used to mitigate the effects of biocultural degradation.

Institutions : CNRS - CREDO