Governing Marine Protected Areas

Resilience through Diversity

Peter J.S. Jones, Peter Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138679238
• eBook ISBN: 9781136455223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ecología

In this innovative volume, the author addresses some important challenges related to the effective and equitable governance of marine protected areas (MPAs). These challenges are explored through a study of 20 MPA case studies from around the world. A novel governance analysis framework is employed to address some key questions: How can top-down and bottom-up approaches to MPA governance be combined? What does this mean, in reality, in different contexts? How can we develop and implement governance approaches that are both effective in achieving conservation objectives and equitable in fairly sharing associated costs and benefits?

The author explores the many issues that these questions raise, as well as exploring options for addressing them. A key theme is that MPA governance needs to combine people, state and market approaches, rather than being based on one approach and its related ideals. Building on a critique of the governance analysis framework developed for common-pool resources, the author puts forward a more holistic and less prescriptive framework for deconstructing and analyzing the governance of MPAs. This inter-disciplinary analysis is aimed at supporting the development of MPA governance approaches that build social-ecological resilience through both institutional and biological diversity. It will also make a significant contribution to wider debates on natural resource governance, as it poses some critical questions for contemporary approaches to related research and offers an alternative theoretical and empirical approach.

Chapter 1

An introduction to Marine Protected Areas

Marine Protected Areas as a governance challenge

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have become firmly established in theory, but much less firmly established in reality. There has been a rapid growth in recent decades in the number of papers and books that discuss the need for MPAs and the science of designing and monitoring them, but the rate at which MPAs are actually designated and effectively protected has not kept pace. Whilst 12.7 per cent of the global land area is covered by terrestrial protected areas, only 2.3 per cent of the global marine area (including high seas) and 5.7 per cent of the marine area under national jurisdiction (excluding high seas) is covered by MPAs,¹ despite growing concerns about declines in marine ecosystems and fisheries.

Why are those concerned about the degradation of our seas continuing to swim against the tide in their efforts to put effective MPAs in place? How can we move to MPA governance systems that balance the vested interests of marine industries, particularly fishing, with the growing scientific and societal concerns about the state of our seas? If it is accepted that MPAs are needed, who should have a say in where they should be and what activities should be excluded? How can the participation of local users in managing MPAs be balanced with the need to achieve strategic conservation objectives and fulfil related obligations? How can MPA restrictions be enforced and cooperation with them otherwise promoted? How can we ensure that the fishermen and related workers who lose out in the short term as a result of MPA restrictions are given a fair deal?

This book will explore these questions and the many issues that they raise from a governance perspective. Governance is discussed in terms of how the ‘top-down’ role of the state (including laws and regulations), the ‘bottom-up’ role of the people (including public and user participation) and the ‘neoliberal’ role of markets (including economic incentives and property rights) can be combined to promote the achievement of MPA objectives. Debates about how to better steer the management of MPAs will be considered in the wider context of debates about governance, with a particular focus on how different governance approaches, i.e. the role of states, people and markets, can be combined to bridge the gap between MPA theories and realities. During the 1990s, the focus of publications was on why MPAs are necessary to restore marine ecosystems and promote sustainable fisheries exploitation, including selection criteria for individual MPAs and the rationale for representative networks. During the 2000s the focus shifted to the scientific basis of designing ecologically coherent MPA networks.

This book will build on such work, undertaken mainly by natural scientists, by focusing on how MPAs can be effectively and equitably governed, contributing to the increasing role that social science is playing in MPA debates and initiatives. These discussions will be grounded in the realities of governing MPAs, drawing mainly on 20 case studies from around the world, undertaken with funding from UNEP (Jones et al., 2011), in which governance issues have been systematically analysed employing a research framework developed by the author.

This book and the case studies it draws on are focused on seas under national jurisdiction,¹ i.e. the focus will not be on MPAs in high seas beyond national jurisdiction as these are subject to different international regulatory regimes which pose very particular governance challenges related to international laws and policies under the auspices of the United Nations and various regional fisheries management organisations. Whilst seas under national jurisdiction represent 39 per cent of the global marine,¹ they tend to support a higher intensity and diversity of uses compared to high seas, are relatively heterogeneous and diverse, and support relatively high levels of ecosystem productivity, the majority (80–90 per cent) of the world’s fish catches being within seas under national jurisdiction.

This chapter will go on to outline growing concerns about declines in fish stocks and marine ecosystems, the resultant calls and targets for MPAs, their international policy framework, their history and the slow progress with their designation and effective implementation. Chapter 2 will discuss the main objectives of MPAs and relate these objectives to different categories of MPAs. Recognising that MPAs represent a progression and extension of their terrestrial equivalents, Chapter 3 will consider some key differences and divergences that often underlie governance challenges, particularly between different value priorities, between the views of marine ecologists and fisheries scientists, and between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Chapter 4 will introduce the theoretical framework for the research on which this book is based, through a discussion of different perspectives on the governance of natural resources, protected areas and MPAs. Chapter 5 will describe the empirical framework that was developed and applied to explore the realities of MPA governance in case studies of MPAs from around the world. Chapter 6 will introduce the case study MPAs and overview the main findings of the governance analyses. Chapter 7 will focus on how the 36 incentives on which these analyses are based have been individually applied amongst the 20 case studies. Chapter 8 will focus on an analysis of how the incentives have been combined to constitute an effective and equitable governance framework, followed by an overview of the implications of this study for governance theories, for research on MPAs and for MPA practitioners.

A basic premise of this book is that whilst much research has been undertaken on MPA governance issues, advice on best practice essentially revolves around the statement that ‘design and management of MPAs must be both top-down and bottom-up’ (Kelleher, 1999, xiii). This book will focus on exploring what this actually means in practice, particularly the challenges of combining top-down, bottom-up and market approaches to governing MPAs, given that ‘MPA governance’ is the various processes by which decisions are taken and implemented, underlying what is technically described as ‘MPA management’. It will be of interest to actual MPA managers in providing a balanced analysis of MPA governance challenges and options for addressing them, particularly in terms of the 36 incentives, which could serve as a menu for options for improving governance, including case studies of how they have been combined in different MPA contexts. It will also contribute to academic debates on natural resource governance issues, including in relation to the concept of social-ecological resilience, by challenging the dominant view that specific governance approaches, particularly bottom-up approaches, are ‘best’ or ‘right’. This challenge will not, however, lead to calls to go ‘back to the barriers’ (Hutton et al., 2005) through a return to imposed, unjust command-and-control ‘fortress conservation’. Rather, the emphasis will be on the need to combine governance approaches, recognising that different approaches each have their strengths and weaknesses.

The dichotomy between arguments for bottom-up and top-down approaches to protected area governance, along with a growing focus on market approaches, suggests that these approaches may be mutually exclusive. This book will argue and demonstrate that this is not the case, and that in the same way that having a higher diversity of species leads to ecosystem stability and resilience, using a higher diversity of governance approaches in combination leads to institutional stability and resilience.

Societal concerns extend out to sea

Some recent assessments of the state of marine ecosystems provide major causes for concern, but what can be done to address these concerns and improve the prospects? This section reviews these concerns and their related societal expressions, leading to an overview of calls for MPAs as a key means of addressing them.

Trends in the state of marine ecosystems in the last 25 years led the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to conclude that ‘most services derived from marine and coastal ecosystems are being degraded and used unsustainably and therefore are deteriorating faster than other ecosystems’ (UNEP, 2006, 4). The assessment also concluded that ‘arresting the further degradation of coastal and marine ecosystem resources for the benefit of both present and future generations is an urgent imperative’ (UNEP, 2006, 6). Another report concluded that in the next 20 years fishing and pollution will increase, warning that ‘the need to plan and implement ecosystem scale and ecosystem-based management of the seas is urgent’ if society is to avoid the substantial deterioration of marine biodiversity and the ‘growing consequences for [the] resource and physical security of coastal nations’ (UNEP, 2010, 5–6). A subsequent report from the International Program on the State of the Oceans (IPSO, 2011, 3) similarly warned that there has been a ‘serial decline’ in the health of ocean ecosystems, due to multiple stressors, such as overfishing (direct and indirect impacts), pollution (toxics and eutrophication), habitat loss through coastal development, invasive species and climate change (ocean warming and acidification), and that ‘without significant changes in the policies that influence human interactions with the marine environment, the current rate of ecosystem change and collapse will accelerate and direct consequences will be felt by all societies’. A recent book provides a compelling account of the fascinating nature of marine ecosystems but also of the growing threats to their health which could undermine their potential to deliver numerous critically important ecosystem services on which the human race depends (Roberts, 2012a), such as food provision, nutrient recycling, climate regulation and shoreline protection (Costanza et al., 1997; Beaumont et al., 2007).

In order to better assess the state of the world’s marine ecosystems, a marine ‘Dow Jones index’ has been developed to track trends in the health of global oceans. The index employs 10 goals which represent a combination of social and ecological indicators, in keeping with the view that humans are an integral part of marine ecosystems. The index score for all of the world’s oceans under national jurisdiction was 60 out of 100, ‘indicating substantial room for improvement’. This assessment particularly identified marine species declines, habitat loss and fish stock depletions as being negative trends that significantly reduced many national index scores, as well as the global index score (Halpern et al., 2012). Whilst these concerns are voiced in a less compelling and alarming tone than those above, presumably as a means of more constructively engaging with policy-makers, they do represent a further scientific expression of concern about the state of our seas. It is worth noting, at this point, that the term ‘ecosystem health’ is frequently used but rarely defined, so it is defined for the purposes of this book as ‘a measure of the structural and functional integrity, biological diversity and resilience of marine ecosystems coupled with their capacity to provide sustainable flows of ecosystem services’. As such, the concept of ecosystem health is strongly influenced by ecocentric values (Table 6, Chapter 3).

There are particular concerns about the health of and prognosis for tropical coral reefs, which are both exceptionally important and extremely vulnerable. Tropical coral reefs cover only around 0.15 per cent of the global marine area, but around 33 per cent of all marine fish species and 25 per cent of the total number of marine macro-species are only found on such reefs (Davidson, 1998, 5), and they provide around 10 per cent of global fish catches, on which many millions of people directly rely for their subsistence and livelihoods. They also provide exceptionally high levels of many other ecosystem services, such as shoreline protection, tourism income, potential pharmaceutical products and cultural values (Moberg and Folke, 1999). Given the high values attached to coral reefs, it is particularly worrying that more than 60 per cent of tropical coral reefs are recognised as being under immediate and direct threat from local pressures, such as fishing, coastal development and pollution, rising to 75 per cent when local pressures are combined with thermal stress, i.e. coral bleaching, related to climate change (WRI, 2011, 3). Coral reefs are therefore understandably a priority for MPA designation, but Mora et al. (2006) found that whilst 18.6 per cent of the global coral reef area was then covered by MPA designations, only 1.6 per cent of the global coral reef area was partially protected by MPAs that were effective in restricting some extractive activities, and less than 0.1 per cent was completely protected by MPAs which effectively prevented all extractive activities. Whilst there are particularly critical concerns about such tropical coral reefs, it is important to recognise that there are increasing societal and scientific concerns about the status and on-going declines of most, if not all, marine ecosystems, as the assessments above indicate.

There are also related concerns about the status of marine fish stocks. The percentage of assessed stocks around the world that are classified as overexploited rose to a high of 32 per cent in 2008, this being a ‘cause for concern’ (FAO, 2010, 8), though it declined to 30 per cent in 2010 (FAO, 2012, 53). Some have argued that the basis for such assessments leads to overestimates of the proportion of overexploited stocks and that the status of stocks is actually relatively stable (Branch et al., 2011, whilst others have argued that the FAO statistics actually mask some worrying trends and indicate ‘that the world fisheries are on a dangerous course’ (Pauly and Froese, 2012). This divergence is a recurring theme in the literature and is one that will be returned to in Chapter 3.

Increasing concerns about the state of marine ecosystems and fish stocks are not confined to official and scientific circles. In 2006, news channels all over the world reported predictions that all global fish stocks will have collapsed by 2048, based on Worm et al.’s (2006)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An introduction to Marine Protected Areas
• 2 Objectives and categories of MPAs
• 3 Differences and divergences
• 4 Different theoretical perspectives on governance
• 5 Empirical framework for analysing MPA governance approaches
• 6 Overview of case studies
• 7 Incentives for effectiveness
• 8 Resilience through diversity
• Note
• References
• Glossary
• Index