MPA News
MPA Perspective: MPA Revenue Generation and the User Fee Option
By Kreg Lindberg, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
As illustrated in the recent MPA News article on self-financing (March 2001), user fees like the US$10 dive fee at Bonaire can make important contributions to the funding of MPAs. Nonetheless, there are several conceptual and practical issues facing MPA managers when deciding whether to charge fees. This article briefly discusses some of these issues in the context of user fees at Belizean MPAs.
Creating Self-Financing Mechanisms for MPAs: Three Cases
Marine protected area practitioners regularly face the challenge of meeting their conservation goals with a budget that is less than needed. Short on funding, MPA managers must limit their conservation programs and visitor services. This situation is what attracts many practitioners to the concept of finding additional resources besides those budgeted. By harnessing the economic potential of an MPA — as by charging fees on visitors — they can use that revenue to support the costs of resource protection. Around the world, MPA practitioners have instituted self-financing programs, and in many cases these programs have played an important role in…
IUCN Offers Financing Guidebook for Managers
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has published a guidebook to assist protected area managers in identifying and securing appropriate and sustainable finance. Financing Protected Areas: Guidelines for Protected Area Managers provides a step-by-step process for creating business and financial plans, and discusses mechanisms for generating revenue flows. Released in October 2000, the 58-page book is based on inputs from a range of sources, including IUCN’s Economics Unit and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). It guides readers through the range of funding sources and mechanisms available at international, national and local levels. Lee Thomas, deputy chair of the…
Citing Benefits of No-Take Areas, Scientists Call for New Networks of Marine Reserves
There is now compelling scientific evidence that no-take areas — or marine reserves — conserve both biodiversity and fisheries, and could help replenish depleted fish stocks, according to a consensus statement signed by 160 marine-science academics from around the world. Released February 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the statement is the culmination of a three-year, international effort to advance scientific understanding of marine reserves. “All around the world there are different experiences, but the basic message is the same: marine reserves work, and they work fast,” said Jane Lubchenco (Oregon…
MPA Perspective: Genetics, Marine Dispersal Distances, and the Design of Marine Reserve Networks
By Stephen Palumbi, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
The seas are increasingly in serious trouble. Coral bleaching, blankets of hypoxic or anoxic water, radical changes in species composition, toxic algal blooms, marine epidemic diseases, mass mortalities, and fisheries collapses are all symptoms of complex but fundamental alterations in the health of marine ecosystems. As both the value and vulnerability of marine ecosystems become broadly recognized, there is an increasing search for effective mechanisms to prevent or reverse widespread declines, and to sustain or restore ocean ecosystems.
Is Your MPA Effective?: New Report Offers Ways to Assess Management
The number of marine protected areas is growing worldwide. But how effective is each in meeting its objectives? A new report from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) offers a method for evaluating the successes and shortfalls of individual protected areas and protected area systems. Evaluating Effectiveness: A Framework for Assessing the Management of Protected Areas, published in October 2000, is an evaluation workbook for protected-area stakeholders. Providing step-by-step advice, the report is designed to be used at a variety of assessment levels, from relatively quick evaluations at a national level to detailed monitoring programs at each site. The report guides…
MPA Perspective: The Development and Establishment of Coral Reef Marine Protected Areas
Charles Darwin was referring to living organisms. I am quoting him here because the complex, interrelated environmental problems which the world is seeing at the end of the 20th century reveal that his observation is equally applicable to the checks and relations between human political and administrative organizations.
We are at last realizing that everything is connected to everything else and that the world operates as a complex process with characteristics which ensure that it will function chaotically. That is to say, precise predictions of events and states a long time ahead will not be possible.
The best reaction to such a situation is to proceed strategically — that is, to adopt policies that will put us in advantageous positions from which to take specific actions which will contribute to our attaining our objective. Our goal is, of course, ecologically sustainable development.
Case Study of a Spill Response: How Galapagos Managers Handled the ‘Jessica’ Spill
Last month, a tanker vessel carrying a cargo of 240,000 gallons (605,000 liters) of fuel ran aground off San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. After two days, the tanker Jessica began to leak, and fuel continued to spill from her for nearly a week. All told, the Jessica released two-thirds of her cargo directly into the waters of the archipelago — the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Galapagos resource managers faced a potential ecological nightmare. But through a combination of manpower, technology, and luck, they appear to have kept the spill from becoming the disaster it could have been. This…
US Launches Institute for MPA Training
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has created a new center to equip MPA stakeholders with skills for designing and managing marine protected areas. The Institute for Marine Protected Area Training and Technical Assistance will develop and provide a variety of training and assistance to MPA managers, scientists, fishermen, and other interested parties, primarily from the US. It will be located at NOAA’s Coastal Services Center in Charleston, South Carolina. The institute’s establishment follows former President Clinton’s executive order from May 2000 that ordered NOAA to establish a new Marine Protected Areas Center to provide the science, tools…
In Galápagos, Clashes Between Fishers and Managers Jeopardize Conservation Efforts
Dozens of fishers in the Galápagos Islands, angered by resource managers’ refusal to expand a lobster quota, rioted in mid-November, looting and destroying buildings including the administrative building of the Galápagos National Park. Eventually halted by military personnel sent from mainland Ecuador, the clashes signaled the continuation of episodes among Galapagueño fishers to use violence to oppose conservation efforts. Conservation scientists in the Galápagos Islands face the challenge of implementing several initiatives — including a zoning plan to create a network of no-take areas (MPA 1:7) — in an island society that is increasingly trying to benefit from valuable fisheries….