THE DISPROPORTIONATE SOCIOECONOMIC BURDEN IN CONSERVATION BORNE BY AMERICAN SAMOA AS AN UNRECOGNIZED SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATE UNDER COLONIAL RULE

Abstract

Action in 2023 by the Biden administration, under Presidential Proclamation 14008, to enclose and designate large areas in the Central Pacific Ocean (CPO) as National Marine Monuments (NMN) - federally protected ocean areas - posed an existential problem for American Samoa. These enclosures would effectively have closed all national fishing areas in reasonable proximity to American flagged tuna fishing vessels based out of Pago Pago. Such a closure would have then pushed fishing effort by these American Samoan based vessels out onto the High Seas, further exposing the fleet to foreign competition and increasing operating costs, with a feared result that the one remaining tuna cannery would be forced to close, devastating the already precarious state of the American Samoan economy, which relies almost entirely on the tuna fishing industry using the deep water harbor at Pago Pago.

The saga of American Samoa’s struggles with the whims of Federal management, along with its lack of recognition as a Small Island Developing Territory, are starkly highlighted by this chain of events, providing very clear contextual evidence of the disproportionate burden in conservation that the Territory has been forced to bear as an unrecognized Small Island Developing State (SIDS) under colonial rule, and the lack of support the Territory has received, not only from the colonial center, but also, as a consequence of its colonized status, from its neighbors in the Pacific, compounding this lack of formal recognition as a SIDS.

This paper outlines how U.S. marine conservation policy in the Pacific, specifically the marine sanctuary expansions proposed under Proclamation 14008 – in 2025 overturned by an Executive Order signed by President Trump – can impose disproportionate socioeconomic costs on non-self-governing territories like American Samoa. Through a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative process-tracing and analysis of international fisheries affairs using the logic of tacit inference, this study reveals how American Samoa’s subaltern status – denied both full domestic representation and international recognition as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) – leaves it uniquely vulnerable to conservation mandates crafted by a distant metropole. The findings highlight a fundamental conflict between top-down global environmentalism based on privileged western-centric liberal ideals and the rights of marginalized territories, advocating for a justice-oriented approach that considers the aspirations of a developing economy, grants autonomy in fisheries management, and recognizes the unique plight of sub-national island jurisdictions such as Amerika Samoa.