Is Marine Protection a Good Investment?

Much has been made of the economic returns on marine protection.  The truth is that the economic return on marine protection varies.  Some marine protected areas (MPAs) generate substantial economic value and others … well not so much.  One thing is for certain – we could do a much better job of using MPAs to improve economic wellbeing.

Few MPAs are designed with economic ends in mind.  MPAs often are established to protect habitat, biodiversity, fish, or cultural resources.  In these cases, the economic benefits of marine protection are seen as “co-benefits” and many an environmental economist has been employed to estimate the value of these MPAs, after the fact.

Unfortunately, too often we value the marine resource and not the marine protection provided.  The question to ask is “what’s the difference in the value of the resource with and without marine protection?”  In certain cases the difference in value is shockingly small, especially after the costs of protection are taken into account.  Some MPAs provide good protection to places with relatively low economic value – islands far from shore, the deep sea.  Some MPAs provide insufficient protection to habitats of high value – the value of the resource declines even with marine protection.  Even MPAs that provide positive net economic returns often do so without careful attention to how better design could improve economic value.   More MPAs could be designed specifically to improve spillover. MPAs could be located specifically to protect habitats that shield homes from storms or create recreational opportunities.  It’s time to make economics a more serious part of siting and designing MPAs, not just an after-the-fact pat on the back.

Author bio: 
Linwood Pendleton is the Director of Ocean and Coastal Policy at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, a Senior Economic Advisor at NOAA, and the Director of the Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership. He has worked on MPA valuations in the U.S. Caribbean, and the Pacific.

Comments

tdykman

The Case Against Marine

The Case Against Marine Protected Areas

Since 1900 nearly 7000 marine protected areas have been created as a mechanism for conservation, largely at the urging of large International NGOs and the World Bank. However, in many cases marine protected areas have failed to actually protect. (Jennings 2009; Roberts 2005). Inadequate long-term funding and widespread management failure have resulted in unenforceable and ineffectual “paper parks” (Jennings 2009; Langholz & Krug 2004; Mitchell 2005).

In a worldwide study of MPAs, for example, less than 16% of protected area managers felt they had adequate funding for effective conservation (Balmford et al. 2004). Most MPAs are therefore failing (Roberts 2005) and, as such, there has been increasing interest in alternative mechanisms for financing and management (Carter et al. 2008; Gallo et al. 2009; Langholz & Krug 2004; Langholz & Lassoie 2001; Sims-Castley et al. 2005; Mitchell 2007; Mitchell 2005).

 

What are the Benefits of MPAs?

Scientific data shows that if you create a no-take zone within an MPA there will be more fish there. After some time, depending on the species involved, there will be a spill-over into areas designated as fishing zones that are adjacent. There is no scientific data that shows increases in biodiversity.

MPAs also turn out to be profit centers for the international consortiums of finance and conservation that establish and run them.  Although typically donors to these large conservation organizations and the World Bank support most of these areas, management fees top out around 20%, and there’s enough headroom to tantalize investors with an ROI of almost 30%.

MPAs enhance tourist resorts and related business adjacent to the MPA because they confer added value in comparison to competitive destinations. Most of these resorts and other business, like the MPAs themselves, are foreign owned. And, in most cases, durables and consumables are purchased outside the local area, management and staff are recruited from foreign countries, and visitors pay for tourist services in foreign currency that doesn’t stick in local community or even the host nation.

What benefits accrue to the local communities whose practices have protected these areas for hundreds of years…. whose cultures consider the wildlife and habit as part of their protected family, who depend on the marine resources for their food, health and livelihood, and conceivably, if you believe in monetization of everything, could earn their way out of poverty with the money generated from their cultural heritage?

 

Indigenous Communities and Areas of High Biological Diversity                  

Over 80% of global terrestrial and marine protected areas are, or were, the homes of Indigenous people. Yet, in the recent past, one of the key operative principles (and catalysts of failure) of both Marine and terrestrial protected areas is the displacement and control of the practices of the indigenous peoples who in habit them and prioritizing of other stakeholder’s needs.

"Conservation biologists, many of whom still maintain that humans and wilderness are inherently incompatible, argue that by allowing native populations to grow, hunt, and gather in protected areas, they are collaborators in the decline of biological diversity. Some, like legendary paleontologist Richard Leakey, maintain "the entire issue" of protected areas "has been politicized by a vociferous minority that refuses to join the mainstream."' Others, like the Wildlife Conservation Society's outspoken president Steven Sanderson, believed for some time that the entire global conservation agenda had been "hijacked" by advocates for indigenous peoples, placing wildlife and biodiversity at peril."  (Mark Dowie. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (pp. xxiv-xxv).

In 1999 the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas formally recognized indigenous peoples' rights to "sustainable traditional use" of their lands and territories. The following year the IUCN adopted a bold set of principles for establishing protected areas, which state unequivocally, "The establishment of new protected areas on indigenous and other traditional peoples' terrestrial, coastal/marine and freshwater domains should be based on the legal recognition of collective rights of communities living within them to the lands, territories, waters, coastal seas and other resources they traditionally own or otherwise occupy or use."

Indigenous peoples' presence, it turns out, may offer the best protection that protected areas can ever receive, and so, we need to invent a new form of conservation and conservation tourism which we are going to call Pro-Poor.

Pro-Poor Tourism in Moçambique

Because Moçambique is a country of low commercial coastal development, low industrialized agriculture, little heavy industry and light industrialized fishing pressure some of the most common direct causes of marine degradation are not present here.

In the Western Indian Ocean region, poverty is the primary underlying cause of degradation of marine resources (WWF Eastern African Marine Ecoregion. 2004a). Rising regional populations have accelerated fishing effort, substantially increasing pressure on fish stocks. (Cesar et al. 2003; Borja et al. 2008). With fewer fish to catch and more mouths to feed, fisherman have turned to more efficient but extremely damaging methods like decreased net size, local longlining and in some areas dynamite and Cyinide fishing.  (Buddemeier et al. 2004; Cesar et al. 2003). Substandard education and health provision in the poorest communities often exacerbate this situation (WWF Eastern African Marine Ecoregion. 2004a). The inadequate infrastructure, absence of alternatives and prohibitive costs for travel (badly maintained roads, infrequent services and limited freezing or post-harvest treatment facilities) all contribute to maintaining this destructive cycle (ibid.).  For these reasons, any marine management plan take does not provide solutions for poverty alleviation and community ownership of establishment and enforcement of regulations is doomed to fail. This is evident from the recent closing of the Vilanculos National Park.

It is also generally recognized that in many developing countries –– where a substantial share of the Earth’s marine biodiversity is found –– conventional, top-down coastal protection and management efforts are too costly, both financially and in terms of scarce human resources, to be of much practical value for broad-scale application.

Over the past ten years, White (1994), Johannes (1998a,b), Pomeroy (2006) and others have argued for the move from top-down to more locally-managed approaches to coastal protection and management, especially in situations where little data is available. This leads to informed decision making, as traditional knowledge and local sources of information are integrated into the process. It also promotes local enforcement and adaptive management of marine resources by and for the local users.

Responsibility for overall environmental management in Moçambique rests with MICOA, The Ministry for the Co- ordination of Environmental Affairs (Hatton 2001; Chircop et al. 2010). The mandate for protected areas sits with the Ministry of Tourism, under the DNAC (National Directorate for Conservation Areas) as tourism is seen to be an avenue for financing conservation (Chircop et al. 2010; WWF 2004b). The National Directorate for Environmental Management within MICOA facilitates the identification of MPA and bolsters management (WWF 2004b). Finally, both the Institute for Development of small scale Fisheries (IDPPE) and the National Fisheries Research Institute (IIP) handle fisheries issues relating to MPAs (WWF 2004b; WWF 2007). There are also regional laws that establish legal structures for locally-managed marine areas (Inhambane Plano Estrategico 2009-2019).

These in-place structures mean that the establishment of a community-led strategic plans for management of marine resources (where the community is the primary beneficiary of income generated from utilization of local marine resources) has, to an extent, been pre-packaged.

Additionally, land-based preserves that have been established from the bottom up exist in Moçambique. The Maputo Elephant Preserve is one such example and the Africa Safari Lodge Foundation specializes in accomplishing the goal of bottom-up management of terrestrial areas of high biological diversity.

If we are going to use zoning plans to accomplish multiple outcomes for areas rich in marine resources, as we should, we would be wise to make sure the needs of the community stakeholders are paramount. Particularly in Moçambique, these stakeholders depend on the ocean for scarce protein. Threats to block access for global species and habitat protections must be clearly and directly compensated.

 

John Dixon

Linwood makes excellent

Linwood makes excellent points. We sometimes forget that protection of MPAs cost money and sometimes the costs exceed the likely values of what is being protected. It all depends! I think there is a real danger where well-meaning NGOs come in with large amounts of funding for MPAs that is both distorting and non-sustainable -- especially if the money goes to pay staff (or expensive ex-patriates!). Modest management costs, financial self-sufficiency, and realistic goals are all required to make a long-term difference. Cross-subsidization across sites is also a good idea --  some parts of a system of PAs can generate large amounts of revenue that can be used to help protct/ manage other areas with much less use or revenue protection.

Money will always be in short supply so common sense, public-private partnerships, and stakeholder and local business involvement are all part of the needd package for sound ecological and financial management of MPAs.

Venetia Hargreaves-Allen

I quite agree with Linwood. 

I quite agree with Linwood.  In the past, there was an urgent need to quantify both market and non market benefits of ecosystems, to demonstrate their value  to policy makers, donors and the public.  Many studies have now acheived this goal for benefits such as fisheries, coastal protection, tourism and recreation. 

However, MPA valuation has rarely progressed onto measuring marginal impacts of management.  This is essential, as the ecological, socio-economic and cultural impacts of MPAs vary widely, as I found in my global study.  They depend on a myriad of factors, including those related to physical attributes, management undertaken and the context in which the MPA is situated.  MPAs can have significant economic benefits, but as Linwood points out, will not always. 

MPAs need to be situated in places where

(a) the ecosystems and nearby communities are most vulnerable to damage without protection (but not where management is undermined by large scale threats which are beyond its control) and

(b) where the greatest increase in benefit can be generated (ideally most cost effectively). 

This will not necessarily be the same places that would be choosen based on ecological parameters such as high endemism. 

There is an urgent need for more interdisciplinary research into marginal economic benefits and costs of management and spatial analysis incorporating a wide variety of data related both to biology, natural resource use and socio-economic factors, such as population pressure and access to markets. 

Situating MPAs in areas where net economic benefits are negligible wastes limited funds and undermines support for a potentially invaluable conservation tool. 

Nicolas Pascal

  Linwood brings an

 

Linwood brings an interesting and original perspective: "investing in MPA is it worth it?" and as usual the answer will be "it depends"...

The question seems a good way to check the efficiency of the tool and is justified in terms of public fund allocation. Does MPA works for spillover? How much is the increase in CPUEs? Does it contribute to sustainability of fishing? Is it a real tourism attribute? How many people would not have come if MPA was not here? What is the impact of MPA on coastal protection ecosys? Etc.

A lot has been written about what MPAs could do but very little has been evidenced. Apart of the ecological effects inside the MPAs, which are now well proven and quite homogeneous, the economic effects of MPAs have been poorly addressed. The few studies have shown, as suggested by Linwood, that economic effects of MPAs are weak, hard to detect and impossible to differentiate from context without complex studies. So more investment appraisal studies must be encouraged if we want to validate/improve MPA as one of the tool for marine resource management (many of the limits of MPAs described by Timothy would appear).

As suggested by John D. cost inefficiencies should be evidenced too with this kind of analysis (to solve them is another fight).

Also, demonstrating real cash-flows of benefits is a way to identify and calibrate specific economic instruments (beneficiary or polluter pays) and find sources of MPA financing. 

Another approach would be to ask "who is asking if investment is good and what for?": are they multilateral agencies, local government, communities..? In my experience, financial analysis of exisitng MPA has brought some indicators to multilateral funding agencies but only as an ex-post justification of funding. For government and communities, an experience in the Pacific with community based MPA Cost benefit analysis has proven to be useful to support MPA setup.  

As mentioned before, too few studies exist to answer today the Linwood question. But the fact that now MPA are commonly presented as the main (if not the unique) solution to marine issues, reinforce the urgence to appraise the tool. 

Nicolas Pascal

 

  

Linwood Pendleton

Good points Nicolas and John.

Good points Nicolas and John.  Next week I will give the keynote address on Day 2 of the French MPA Agency national meeting.  It is called "Beyond Valuation: Using Economics (and Ecosystem Values) to Locate, Design, Monitor and Manage Marine Protected Areas."  I touch on some of the points made by Nicolas.

Mahé Charles is working with me to create a paper from these remarks, but I will try to share some version of the remarks before then if there is interest.

Linwood

Venetia Hargreaves-Allen

The MMAS work that CI

The MMAS work that CI undertook has shown that there exist MPAs where there are benefits such as capacity building, infra strcuture investment, donor funds and expertise that are brought to an area due to the designation of an MPA, which are not tied to ecological changes or enforcement, but which increase the quality of life and welfare nearby.  Amanda VIncent's study suggest that ecological improvements such a those of habitat quality can be perceived by local stakeholders, even if they  are not real, perhaps due to these other benefits.  The other side of the coin is that if MPAs do not provide any ecological improvements, they are unlikely to be sustainable, but they could be seen as a mechanism for transferring international use and non-use values into local development and welfare related benefits. This may be as problematic as MPAs that do not generate large net economic benefits and so are not the most efficient use of donor funds. 

Lauretta Burke

Linwood makes many valid

Linwood makes many valid points in the article, “Is Marine Protection a Good Investment”.  It is obviously a difficult question to answer because of the large degree of uncertainty on at least one side of the equation - namely estimating the biological and economic benefits of improved management. I worry, that if we use an economic filter too strongly, we might erroneously reject some potentially worthwhile investments in coastal management.

In the case of coral reefs, for example, there remains a great deal of uncertainty on cause and effect relationships – how much a reduction in fishing pressure or a reduction in nutrient input will influence coral condition. In addition, the less predictable factors or coral disease and thermal stress inducing coral bleaching confound our predictions of outcomes (and hence benefits.) So, the error bands must be really wide.

On another point, I agree with Linwood that it makes sense to create MPAs in areas where there are pressures which can be controlled. I also believe that in some areas, the threat is so high that management will not be able to curtail it, so some areas might well be beyond saving. At the other end of the spectrum, however, are areas which are remote and currently under low threat. Although I agree that investing in policing large, remote areas (when it does not yield benefits) does not make sense. But, there will be cases where establishing MPAs in low threat areas will prevent threats from increasing. Prevention of degradation does add value.

Granted, I am focusing on coral reef ecosystems which are “up against the ropes” relative to many other types coastal ecosystem. Most areas with coral reefs are threatened, and the proportion under threat will increase as oceans warm and acidify. Protecting the areas which are likely to remain under low to moderate threat becomes increasingly important. These can serve as important sources for larvae, promoting coral resilience and helping other reefs recover in the future.

Overall, I think including an economic filter in MPA establishment makes sense, but we also have to look closely at the full range of uncertainties and potential benefits beyond the boundaries. We will need to be both strategic and opportunistic in establishing MPAs.  

Lauretta

Adk109

Marine Protection is

Marine Protection is responsible work for everyone. Under private sectors, investment in marine conservation is being done on very large scale.  Other than government fund funding and revenues management of private activities can be activated in park. I marine protected areas are very important factors in coral and fish stock replenishment.

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