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Marine Sustainability: Socio-Economic Outcomes of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs)

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 8705

Special Issue Editors

The Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR), University of Algarve, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal
Interests: marine ecology; conservation; MPAs; fisheries management; protection levels; MPA effectiveness; ocean threats; MSP; climate change
National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), 01500 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Interests: socio-economics study; value chain analysis; gender study; cost-benefit analysis
1. Nova School of Business and Economics, Nova University of Lisbon, 2775-405 Cascavelos, Portugal
2. MARE- Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, University of Lisbon, 3004-517 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: biodiversity conservation; economic valuation; sustainable management; stakeholders engagement; MPAs; MSP

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been widely studied in terms of their ecological outcomes. However, cultural, social, and economic impacts of MPA implementation are much less understood but are central for MPA creation and management. Recent studies are evidencing the lack of such assessments as well as the importance of understanding the outcomes of different protection measures. Protection levels are associated with different ecological results, yet they are also expected to deliver diverse social, economic, and cultural outcomes, as these often rely on ecosystems’ health. Other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are areas delivering conservation outcomes, even when primary objectives are not conservation-related. These are being increasingly valued as legitimate area-based mechanisms with ecological but also social, economic, and cultural roles. OECMS are expected to markedly expand in the following years, but their range of benefits remains to be understood. This Special Issue aims to contribute evidence on social, economic, and cultural outcomes, likely relying on positive ecological results, of different protection and management regimes of MPAs and OECMs. Submitted papers can include empirical case studies, assessments, reviews, meta-analyses, and models.

Dr. Bárbara Horta E Costa
Dr. Aruna Maheepala
Dr. Carina Vieira da Silva
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • MPAs
  • OECMs
  • human well-being
  • social, economic and cultural outcomes
  • protection levels
  • ecosystem services
  • sustainable management

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 1885 KiB  
Article
Applying Marine Protected Area Frameworks to Areas beyond National Jurisdiction
by Emily S. Nocito, Jenna Sullivan-Stack, Elizabeth P. Pike, Kristina M. Gjerde and Cassandra M. Brooks
Sustainability 2022, 14(10), 5971; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14105971 - 14 May 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3901
Abstract
Marine protected areas (MPAs) can provide a range of ecological benefits. Frameworks—including the IUCN protected area categories and The MPA Guide—offer tools towards evaluating an MPA’s objectives, types, Level of Protection, and potential effectiveness. However, the majority of MPAs exist in national [...] Read more.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) can provide a range of ecological benefits. Frameworks—including the IUCN protected area categories and The MPA Guide—offer tools towards evaluating an MPA’s objectives, types, Level of Protection, and potential effectiveness. However, the majority of MPAs exist in national waters, raising the question of how these frameworks apply in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). We evaluated the existing ABNJ MPAs in the Antarctic designated through the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) using the two above mentioned frameworks. The newly released The MPA Guide, which complements guidance from the IUCN protected area categories, provides perhaps the most exhaustive framework as it seeks to evaluate implementation, enabling conditions, and outcomes. The CCAMLR MPAs ranged from Category 1A (for IUCN)/Highly Protected (for The MPA Guide) to Category IV (for IUCN)/Lightly Protected (for The MPA Guide) due to differences in management objectives and activities occurring within the zones of the MPAs. Given ongoing negotiations for a new international, legally binding treaty for high seas biodiversity, evaluating an MPA using these existing frameworks will prove useful to allow for a full comprehensive picture of an MPA and what it can expect to achieve. Full article
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18 pages, 2505 KiB  
Article
Comparing the Performance of Four Very Large Marine Protected Areas with Different Levels of Protection
by Veronica Relano, Maria Lourdes Deng Palomares and Daniel Pauly
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9572; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13179572 - 25 Aug 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3785
Abstract
In the last decades, several targets for marine conservation were set to counter the effects of increasing fishing pressure, e.g., protecting 10% of the sea by 2020, and establishing large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs). Using the ‘reconstructed’ catch data for 1950 to 2018 [...] Read more.
In the last decades, several targets for marine conservation were set to counter the effects of increasing fishing pressure, e.g., protecting 10% of the sea by 2020, and establishing large-scale marine protected areas (LSMPAs). Using the ‘reconstructed’ catch data for 1950 to 2018 made available by the Sea Around Us initiative, we show that the declaration of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in 1983 by the U.S.A. and its protection by the U.S. Coast Guard had a much bigger impact on catches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands than the subsequent creation of a LSMPA. This is similar to Pitcairn Islands, a UK territory. Trends differed sharply in the Galapagos and New Caledonia, where neither their EEZ declaration nor the LSMPA (by Ecuador in 1988 and by France in 2014) stopped local fisheries from continuous expansion. Our results also demonstrate that in the studied multizone LSMPAs continued local fishing induces a ‘fishing down’ effect wherein the mean trophic level (TL) declined, especially in the Galapagos, by 0.1 TL per decade. Stakeholders’ responses to a short questionnaire and satellite imagery lent support to these results in that they documented substantial fishing operations and ‘fishing the line’ within and around multizone LSMPAs. In the case of EEZs around less populated or unpopulated islands, banning foreign fishing may reduce catch much more than a subsequent LSMPA declaration. This confirms that EEZs are a tool for coastal countries to protect their marine biodiversity and that allowing fishing in an MPA, while politically convenient, may result in ‘paper parks’ within which fishing can cause the same deleterious effects as in wholly unprotected areas. Full article
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