Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key strategies for sustaining the delivery of critical marine ecosystem services, but recent reviews have revealed wide variation in ecological and social outcomes. Although the science underpinning the “reserve effect” of MPAs is well developed, and the importance of governance and management to MPA performance is well known, there has been no analysis of how management input to MPAs affects, or does not affect, biological outcomes in terms of species trends within similar MPAs.
The SESYNC Pursuit project “Solving the Mystery of Marine Protected Area (MPA) Performance” sought to uncover the linkages between MPA management and ecosystem structure, function, and services. To do this, the research team compiled, integrated, and analyzed governance, biophysical, and social data from MPAs across the globe. The interdisciplinary research team spanned various professions, institutions, ethnicities, and career levels, including representatives from academic, governmental, non-governmental, and private sectors. Their diverse backgrounds included biologists and ecologists, anthropologists, economists and other social scientists, and database and decision support specialists.
The researchers found major weaknesses in MPA management processes globally: only 51 percent of MPAs said that stakeholders had direct involvement in decision-making, and a mere 9 percent of MPAs reported adequate staff to carry out critical management activities. When looking at ecological impacts, most MPAs (71 percent) had positive impacts on fish populations. However, these ecological impacts were highly variable. Using statistical approaches drawn from the impact evaluation literature, the researchers found that staff capacity and budget were the most important factors in explaining the variation in ecological impacts. MPAs with adequate staff capacity had ecological impacts over three times greater than those without adequate capacity. This result, and the strong correlative relationship between capacity and other key management activities (e.g. enforcement, monitoring), indicate that capacity shortfalls are likely to be limiting the potential of many MPAs around the world to achieve their targets/objectives. While the global community focuses on expanding the current MPA network, these results emphasize the importance of meeting capacity needs in current and future MPAs to ensure the effective conservation of marine species.