Traditional resource management (TRM) in a community reflects how the community has been formed and functioning.

In the South Pacific region, TRMs continue to be observed in the Pacific Island Countries such as Fiji. Previous studies conducted by the authors in Gau Island, the fifth largest island of Fiji, having sixteen villages revealed that characteristics of the TRMs of medicinal plants differed significantly among those villages. The TRM in each village has developed separately depending on the social and ecological factors.

In order to better grasp the relationships between the quality of the TRM and the social and ecological factors, this study attempts to summarizes the traditional knowledge and the TRM systems in the island. Through the study, the authors aim to clarify the factors that determine the effective or ineffective resource management practices in each village.

This study employs the Social-Ecological System (SES) framework developed by Ostrom (2009) consisting of several social and ecological factors: Resource System (RS), Resource Units (RU), Governance System (GS) and Actors (A), in order to analyze the impacts on the TRM. In this talk, we introduce the design and preliminary data of the study collected in Malawai village.