MPA News
Recent Developments toward a System of High-Seas MPAs: An Interview with Kristina Gjerde
As recent as 2000, there was little discussion within international government on the concept of protecting high-seas ecosystems with MPAs. Despite concern that deep-sea habitats outside national jurisdictions were threatened by largely unregulated human activities, the lack of a dedicated legal framework for applying MPAs in international waters was a major obstacle to addressing the problem. Now that is beginning to change, thanks in part to the work of Kristina Gjerde. As high seas policy advisor to the IUCN Global Marine Programme and coordinator of the High Seas MPA Task Force for the World Commission on Protected Areas, Gjerde has…
Notes & News
Four companies to halt high-seas fishing in southern Indian Ocean Four major fishing companies have announced a voluntary halt to trawling in 11 deep-sea areas of the southern Indian Ocean. The companies – Austral Fisheries Pty Ltd (Australia), Bel Ocean II Ltd (Mauritius), Sealord Group (New Zealand), and TransNamibia Fishing Pty Ltd (Namibia), which comprise the newly formed Southern Indian Ocean Deepwater Fishers’ Association (SIODFA) – are the main trawling operators in the region. IUCN has called the voluntary closures “a global first” for the high seas. The IUCN press release, including details and locations of the specific sites, is…
Letter from the Editor
Dear Reader, This issue of MPA News marks the beginning of our eighth year of publication. Launched in 1999, MPA News now has nearly 4000 official subscribers in 108 countries. Each edition is a tribute to the skills and experience of the MPA practitioners interviewed and profiled in its pages. Thank you to all those who have generously taken time to share their knowledge with their peers through MPA News. Thanks also to the many readers who participated in our recent subscriber survey. You offered many useful suggestions for ways we could improve our service, and we will be incorporating…
Balancing Ecology and Economics: Viewpoints on the Process of Planning an MPA Network for SE Australia
In May 2006, the Australian Government released its final plan for a representative network of MPAs in the country’s South-east Region, comprising a proposal for 13 new MPAs in Commonwealth waters. Totaling 226,000 km2, the MPA network is substantially larger than a proposal the government released in December 2005 (171,000 km2), yet reportedly will have a 90% lower impact on commercial fisheries. The Government has now begun a statutory process to have each MPA designated as a Commonwealth marine reserve, expected by the end of 2006. The proposed MPA network has received strong support from the commercial fishing sector and…
Notes & News
Report offers lessons learned from network of locally-managed marine areas An initiative to help locally-managed marine areas (LMMAs) in the Western Pacific develop best practices for planning and management has released a report with preliminary lessons learned from the past five years. Launched in 2000, the LMMA Network consists of 244 sites in Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The bulk of the report focuses on a subset of these sites – those with the most extensive ecological and socioeconomic data available – and analyzes the role of various factors in the sites’ success, including those related to governance, local…
Special Feature: Measurement of Management Effectiveness: The Next Major Stage in MPAs?
Over the past two decades, much of the effort among proponents of marine protected areas has focused on securing designation of new sites. Thousands of MPAs now exist worldwide, with more to come as nations work to establish representative MPA networks. While some of these sites are meeting their goals, many are having difficulty, with financial shortfalls, low compliance, and other challenges. Ineffective MPAs may be little better than having no protection at all. The emergence in recent years of several methods for measuring the effectiveness of MPA management has been a welcome development. By examining how well MPAs are…
Why Should We Evaluate the Management Effectiveness of a MPA?
Editor’s note: Sue Wells, a private consultant to the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, coordinated the theme on “Ensuring Effective Management” at the First International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC1) in October 2005 in Geelong, Australia. Nancy Dahl-Tacconi is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland, Australia, studying the roles of scientific methods and participatory processes in evaluating MPA effectiveness. By Sue Wells and Nancy Dahl-Tacconi There is resistance from some MPA managers to the concept of formal, systemized evaluations of their sites. In October 2005 during a side event on management evaluations at the International Marine Protected Areas…
Table: Methodologies for Evaluating MPA Management Effectiveness
By Sue Wells and Nancy Dahl-Tacconi Many methods are being developed and tested for evaluating MPA management effectiveness. This is good: different situations and needs of MPAs require different methods of evaluation. Bear in mind that the various methods are not mutually exclusive. There is potential for combining parts of them, as well as others developed for terrestrial protected areas or more general coastal management initiatives, to create evaluations that cater to specific needs. The following table gives examples of three general types of evaluation methods: broad-scale, fine-scale, and scorecards. Broad-scale methods (1 and 2) include measures and descriptions of…
On Defining MPA “Success” and Choosing an Evaluation Method: Interview with Marc Hockings
Marc Hockings is vice-chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), responsible for WCPA’s program of Science, Knowledge and Management, which includes work on management effectiveness. He co-authored the IUCN report Evaluating Effectiveness: A Framework for Assessing the Management of Protected Areas with Sue Stolton and Nigel Dudley in 2000 (http://www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/pubs/guidelines.htm); a revised version is due for release in mid-2006. Hockings is directing a WCPA-led project to analyze all studies of management effectiveness at protected areas worldwide, including distilling the most useful indicators. The project, which also involves WWF, The Nature Conservancy, and the World Bank, is scheduled…
Notes & News
Australian government releases final plan for MPA network in SE Australia The Australian government has released its final plan for a representative MPA network in Southeast Australia, to cover 226,000 km2 of commonwealth waters in 13 new marine protected areas. The release on 6 May followed months of consultations with stakeholders, conducted in response to the government’s proposal last year of a candidate MPA network (“MPA Network Is Proposed for SE Australia”, MPA News 7:7). The government will now begin a statutory process to have each MPA designated as a Commonwealth protected area, expected to be completed by the end…