Through these rights, they ascribe access, ownership and use of resources, based on membership of the local community (Sunde and Isaacs 2008). Unfortunately, similar initiatives to those of the Vezo have been eroded due to factors that include societal dynamism in the WIO, population growth, materialism and the proliferation of new value systems regarding resources (Cinner and Aswani 2007, Masalu and others, 2010). This has made their contribution to the sustainable use and conservation of coastal and marine resources questionable, and difficult to integrate into legalised conventional management practice (Sunde and Isaacs 2008).