MARINE PROTECTED AREAS (MPAs)

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are widely used to promote biodiversity and enhance productivity for commercial and recreation fisheries. There are approximately 15,000 MPAs globally that cover roughly 7% of the world’s marine environment. They have an important role in marine spatial planning and are often used as part of a process for organising and conserving coastal habitats and resources while balancing the social, economic and environmental services that coastal areas provide.

Common objectives for MPAs include relieving pressures from threatening processes, conserving key habitats that support commercially important fishery species, providing refuge for iconic or rare species and sustaining the socio-economic development of a coastal region. While all MPAs seek to improve one or more of these objectives, there are a number of factors that determine their success.

Explicit objectives: Establishing explicit objectives that clearly articulate what is intended to be achieved is critical to a successful MPA. MPAs typically strive to conserve whole habitats or ecosystems to slow the loss of biodiversity and protect ecosystem services from threats like the impacts of climate changes.

Clear objectives enable the establishment of a clear strategy to achieve those objectives. In turn this enables effective management planning implementation and evaluation of the MPA.

High level of stakeholder engagement: All groups and organisations that will be impacted by the MPA or will benefit from the installation of the MPA should be included in the process of planning and enforcement. In particular, those groups whose compliance is crucial for MPA effectiveness (e.g. fishing co-operatives and local governments) should be targeted. As part of successful stakeholder engagement, planning for economic transition of community members impacted by MPA development through alternative income projects is critical.

Clear governance and leadership: A key factor for successful MPAs is a clear governance and leadership structure. Governance encompasses the legislative and jurisdictional framework, policies and mechanisms used to support decision making for the MPA. A successful governance structure requires the long-term commitment to develop the formal and informal arrangements required to determine how resources are managed efficiently. A clear governance structure helps shape MPA planning, enforcement and compliance, enforcement and the development of shared social norms regarding the sustainable use of the MPA’s resources.

Supporting legislation: A well formulated legislative framework enhances the development of a clear purpose and objectives for an MPA. This enables effective policy development, management planning and compliance enforcement. Effective legislative frameworks are a critical part of a governance structure that outlines clear roles and responsibilities for government agencies, designated management authorities and committees and community representatives. Legislative clarity is also essential to create enabling conditions to strengthen adherence to the purpose and objectives of the MPA over longer timeframes and across changing government regimes.

Enforcement and compliance: Effective enforcement is critical for achieving MPA objectives. Effective compliance and enforcement of MPAs rules begins with clear boundary that is well understood by MPA user groups, ultimately influencing their behaviour to align with the objectives of the area. Effective surveillance is an important part of enforcement and often acts as a deterrent.

Pros and cons

MPAs can be an effective intervention for the improvement of biodiversity and fish stocks as well as the protection of critical coastal habitats.
Successful MPA management requires input into decision making at all scales from local communities to federal governments with the most effective models incorporating regulators as well as the regulated.
MPAs can be tailored to local conditions and can be scaled depending on the magnitude of the impact or threat.
MPAs facilitate multiple ecological benefits.

Effective MPA implementation often relies on significant community participation. Effective stakeholder management is time consuming process for all involved and, if not done well, can lead to burn out of the individuals involved and an eventual loss of interest in the process.
There is no one size fits all approach to MPA development and implementation, so each location needs to be tailored accordingly.

Indicative cost

Marine protected areas’ implementation is low cost as no infrastructure development is required. Whilst providing cost estimates is difficult given the broad range of influencing factors across the Pacific, the below table outlines the key components that should be taken into account when estimating a marine protected area budget for a specific location.

Components	Unit (A)	Number of units (B)	Unit Cost (C)	Budget (B x C)
Establishment Cost
Survey of area to identify marine values	e.g. km²
Protected area planning including community engagement	e.g hours
Establishing governance mechanisms	e.g. hours
Land (if not already held)	e.g. km²
Materials (e.g. fencing)	e.g. number
Labour	e.g. hours
Reporting to donor (if required)	e.g. hours
Ongoing Cost
Maintenance Cost (materials and labour)	e.g. number and hours
Community outreach and engagement	e.g. hours
Reporting and Monitoring	e.g. hours

Comparison against conventional approaches

Culturally sensitive Marine Protected Areas can reduce conflict and support the responsible and sustainable conservation of biodiversity and recovery of the coastal environments.

Resources

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Guidelines fpr applying the IUCN protected area management categories to marine protected areas. See https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/PAG-019-2nd%20ed.-En.pdf
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Applying IUCN’s Global Conservation Standards to Marine Protected Areas (MPA). See https://www.iucn.org/sites/dev/files/content/documents/applying_mpa_global_standards_final_version_050418.pdf
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Revisiting “Success” and “Failure” of Marine Protected Areas: A Conservation Scientist Perspective. See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00223/full

Figure References

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1. Figure adapted from a); IUCN (1988) General Assembly Recommendation 17.38. 17th Session of the General Assembly of International Union for Conservation of Nature. San Jose, Costa Rica, 1-10 February; and b) IUCN (1994) General Assembly Recommendation 19.46. 19th Session of the General Assembly of International Union for Conservation of Nature. Buenos Aires, Argentina 17-26 January.

On-ground impacts that the EbA option addresses

Decreasing species composition, production and yield

Loss or damage to assets

Erosion of habitat

Case study

Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in the Pacific Island Countries and Atolls

Vanuatu

The Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in the Pacific Island Countries and Atolls (MACBIO) Project supports the Vanuatu government in achieving sustainable management of ecosystems and marine resources. It is implemented by GIZ with technical support from IUCN-Oceania in collaboration with SPREP.

The project aimed to support the Vanuatu government in enhancing ecosystem-based management and marine resources, including:

Effective management of marine resources resulting in resilient coastal and marine economies.
Sustainable use of marine biodiversity contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Strengthening local livelihoods.

Through the project, Vanuatu developed a National Oceans Policy which included several themes like Marine Protected Areas, fisheries, culture, tourism, climate change and shipping. The vision for Marine Protected Areas in the policy is as follows: “To establish, by 2020, a national ecologically representative system of marine protected areas that contributes to cultural, social, economic and environmental goals” keeping in mind the Convention on Biodiversity. The policy also included Marine spatial planning (MSP) to minimise conflicts among different users and promote conservation and sustainable use of marine resources”.

The project supported marine and coastal biodiversity management in two sites namely learning and integration sites:

The learning site at Nguna Pele assisted stakeholders at local and national scale to access, analyse, document and showcase lessons learnt across the country and also among pacific neighbouring countries.
Integration site Banks and Torres maps the entire multi-level governance structures to see the exiting bottlenecks and how can they be addressed to assist the stakeholders.

Reference: Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in the Pacific Island Countries and Atolls, https://www.nab.vu/project/marine-coastal-biodiversity-pacific-islands-macbio and Vanuatu’s National Ocean Policy, see http://macbio-pacific.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Vanuatu_National_Ocean_Policy_High_Res_020616.pdf