The MPA Guide: A framework to achieve global goals for the ocean
- 10 September 2021
- journal article
- review article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 373 (6560), eabf0861
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf0861
Abstract
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are conservation tools intended to protect biodiversity, promote healthy and resilient marine ecosystems, and provide societal benefits. Despite codification of MPAs in international agreements, MPA effectiveness is currently undermined by confusion about the many MPA types and consequent wildly differing outcomes. We present a clarifying science-driven framework—The MPA Guide—to aid design and evaluation. The guide categorizes MPAs by stage of establishment and level of protection, specifies the resulting direct and indirect outcomes for biodiversity and human well-being, and describes the key conditions necessary for positive outcomes. Use of this MPA Guide by scientists, managers, policy-makers, and communities can improve effective design, implementation, assessment, and tracking of existing and future MPAs to achieve conservation goals by using scientifically grounded practices.Keywords
This publication has 186 references indexed in Scilit:
- A General Business Model for Marine ReservesPLOS ONE, 2013
- The effect of a protected area on the tradeoffs between short-run and long-run benefits from mangrove ecosystemsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
- Large Recovery of Fish Biomass in a No-Take Marine ReservePLOS ONE, 2011
- Predator-Induced Demographic Shifts in Coral Reef Fish AssemblagesPLOS ONE, 2011
- Larval Connectivity in an Effective Network of Marine Protected AreasPLOS ONE, 2010
- Detecting larval export from marine reservesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Decadal trends in marine reserves reveal differential rates of change in direct and indirect effectsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Marine no-take zone rapidly benefits endangered penguinBiology Letters, 2010
- Overfishing reduces resilience of kelp beds to climate-driven catastrophic phase shiftProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Larval dispersal connects fish populations in a network of marine protected areasProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009