Improving marine protected area governance through collaboration and co-production.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) socio-ecological effectiveness depends on a number of management and governance elements, among which stakeholder engagement and community support play key roles. Collaborative conservation initiatives that engage stakeholders in action research and knowledge co-production processes can enhance management and governance of MPAs. To design effective strategies aimed at reconciling biodiversity conservation and management of sustainable human uses, it is key to assess how local communities respond to such initiatives and identify the set of contextual factors, institutional, local and individual, potentially affecting these responses. This paper presents the approach and results of one such initiative, spanning 6 EU countries and 11 MPAs in the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on small-scale fishers as key MPA users. Through a collaborative project, managers and fishers agreed upon specific governance interventions (e.g. increasing stakeholder engagement, engaging fishers in monitoring activities, reducing fishing efforts) to be implemented in each MPA for one year. Structured surveys queried: MPA managers on the MPA context, governance structure, feasibility and effectiveness of the tested interventions; and small-scale fishers on their perceptions of the impact of the tested interventions on a set of 9 socio-ecological variables (e.g. amount of fish caught, level of participation in decision-making, support for the MPA). Results revealed that the interventions tested were relatively feasible, effective and cost-effective. Fishers reported positive perceptions of the interventions for the 9 variables considered, especially for level of support for the MPA and for those associated with aspects of governance. Proportional odds models highlighted perceived effects are maximized under certain institutional, local and individual circumstances (e.g. old MPAs, small fisher communities, and fishers with a high proportion of income from fisheries). Findings highlight that employing good governance processes involving stakeholders may rapidly generate improved local support for conservation and provide insights for potential leverage points upon which to act to maximize perceived effectiveness and enhance support toward MPAs.

Organization Science improves management effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas.

The ecological management effectiveness (EME) of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is the degree to which MPAs reach their ecological goals. The significant variability of EME among MPAs has been partly explained by MPA design, management and implementation features (e.g. surface area, enforcement, age of protection). We investigated EME variability by employing, for the first time, Organization Science. Eight Mediterranean MPAs were taken into account as case studies to explore the relationships between EME and MPA features, such as: 1) organizational size (i.e. the ratio between the number of full-time employees and the total MPA surface area), 2) management performance (i.e. the level of effort exerted to enhance and sustain the MPA management, including enforcement), 3) total surface area, and 4) MPA age. The log-response ratios of fish biomass and density in protected vs unprotected (control) areas were used as a proxy of EME. Management performance, organizational size and, to a lesser extent, MPA age were positively correlated with the log-response ratio of fish biomass, whereas total surface area did not display a significant role. None of the four features considered was significantly correlated with the log-response ratio of fish density. Based on our findings, we argue that the employment of Organization Science in the management effectiveness assessment can assist MPA managers to reach MPAs goals more effectively, with a more efficient use of available resources.

Applying organization science to assess the management performance of Marine Protected Areas: An exploratory study.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are important tools to achieve marine conservation and resources management goals. The management effectiveness of MPAs (the degree to which MPAs achieve their goals) is highly variable and can be affected by many MPA attributes, for example their design, enforcement and age. Another key factor possibly affecting MPA management effectiveness is the management performance, here conceived according to Horigue et al. definition (2014) as the "level of effort exerted to enhance and sustain management of MPAs". Organization Science (OS), the discipline that studies organizations, can offer a useful framework to assess and interpret MPA management performance. Using an exploratory multiple case study approach, we applied OS principles to 11 Mediterranean MPAs in order to: i) characterize several MPA organizational features; ii) assess MPA management performance (evaluated as the effort deployed in, for example, planning the future, formalizing measurable goals, and implementing specific strategies). Results show that a number of organizational features and networking attributes are highly variable among the MPAs we have studied. For instance, goals are seldom measurable and the strategy to achieve goals is not systematically pursued. Two relevant outcomes emerge from this exploratory study: i) the management performance of the MPAs considered needs considerable improvements; ii) the methods and the approach proposed could help MPAs' managers and policy makers to understand how to improve their management performance and, consequently, their effectiveness.