Governing marine protected areas: Social–ecological resilience through institutional diversity
Highlights
► Five different categories of MPA governance approach are identified. ► Different types of incentives are combined in governing MPAs in different contexts. ► Interactions between the incentives lead to a hypothesised 'web of incentives'. ► Legal incentives represent strong links in such a 'web of incentives'. ► Diversity of inter-connected incentives is key to resilience in MPA governance systems.
Section snippets
Marine conservation in the face of strong driving forces
It is widely acknowledged that protected areas are being increasingly influenced by the global forces of economic development and socio–political change [1], [2]. Such ‘driving forces’ have also been discussed in terms of ‘the root causes of biodiversity loss’ [3]. The MPAG case studies that are the focus of this Special Issue illustrate that, with specific regards to MPAs, such driving forces include:
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The increasing reach of global fish markets for a growing and increasingly affluent human
Governance categories
Five broad approaches to MPA governance can be recognised in the 20 case studies examined to date. This categorisation is based on the defining characteristics and attributes of MPA governance, particularly the allocation of authority and responsibilities between different parties and/or actors involved in governing MPAs, and the key incentives used to steer related processes. Although the number of case studies within each category is small, this categorisation enables contextualized
Which incentives were most frequently cited as used and needed?
Overall, the results from this relatively small pool of preliminary case studies show that a wide range of incentives are currently being used to govern the MPAs. Only one incentive was not cited as being used or needed amongst this preliminary sample of case studies – payments for the flow of ecosystem services provided by the MPA. This suggests that while there is a growing emphasis in literature on the critical need to maintain/restore the flow of marine ecosystem services [30], it would
Improving MPA governance: resilience through diversity
In addition to the relative contribution of individual incentives in supporting MPA governance, the analysis also reveals the inter-connections between different incentives (see Supplementary material). The 20 MPAs examined exhibited strong and weak interconnections in their webs of incentives (Fig. 2). An example of a strong interconnection would be the need for effective enforcement of conservation regulations to promote sustainable resource use, and ensuring that the economic benefits of the
Cross-cutting issues and policy implications
In the analyses of the 20 case studies examined to date, a number of cross-cutting issues were identified, which have a significant influence on MPA effectiveness, regardless of the context and governance approach applied. Addressing such issues plays an important role in improving MPA governance in the case studies.
The role of the state is critical in enabling and supporting the implementation of various incentives in all MPA governance categories. Even in MPAs in categories II, III and IV
Conclusion
Overall, the inter-disciplinary and realist institutional analyses presented in this paper indicate that MPA governance systems and the ecosystems they are intended to conserve are linked, in that resilience in governance systems tends to prevent or mitigate the perturbations caused by driving forces, leading to resilient ecological systems. The analyses also indicate that, regardless of the governance approach adopted, resilience in MPA governance systems derives from employing a diversity of
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