A framework of lessons learned from community-based marine reserves and its effectiveness in guiding a new coastal management initiative in the Philippines

Community-based coastal resource management has been widely applied within the Philippines. However, small-scale community-based reserves are often inefficient owing to management inadequacies arising because of a lack of local support or enforcement or poor design. Because there are many potential pitfalls during the establishment of even small community-based reserves, it is important for coastal managers, communities, and facilitating institutions to have access to a summary of the key factors for success. Reviewing relevant literature, we present a framework of lessons learned during the establishment of protected areas, mainly in the Philippines. The framework contains summary guidance on the importance of (1) an island location, (2) small community population size, (3) minimal effect of land-based development, (4) application of a bottom-up approach, (5) an external facilitating institution, (6) acquisition of title, (7) use of a scientific information database, (8) stakeholder involvement, (9) the establishment of legislation, (10) community empowerment, (11) alternative livelihood schemes, (12) surveillance, (13) tangible management results, (14) continued involvement of external groups after reserve establishment, and (15) small-scale project expansion. These framework components guided the establishment of a community-based protected area at Danjugan Island, Negros Occidental, Philippines. This case study showed that the framework was a useful guide that led to establishing and implementing a community-based marine reserve. Evaluation of the reserve using standard criteria developed for the Philippines shows that the Danjugan Island protected area can be considered successful and sustainable. At Danjugan Island, all of the lessons synthesized in the framework were important and should be considered elsewhere, even for relatively small projects. As shown in previous projects in the Philippines, local involvement and stewardship of the protected area appeared particularly important for its successful implementation. The involvement of external organizations also seemed to have a key role in the success of the Danjugan Island project by guiding local decision-makers in the sociobiological principles of establishing protected areas. However, the relative importance of each component of the framework will vary between coastal management initiatives both within the Philippines and across the wider Asian region.

A theory for optimal monitoring of marine reserves

Monitoring of marine reserves has traditionally focused on the task of rejecting the null hypothesis that marine reserves have no impact on the population and community structure of harvested populations. We consider the role of monitoring of marine reserves to gain information needed for management decisions. In particular we use a decision theoretic framework to answer the question: how long should we monitor the recovery of an over-fished stock to determine the fraction of that stock to reserve? This exposes a natural tension between the cost (in terms of time and money) of additional monitoring, and the benefit of more accurately parameterizing a population model for the stock, that in turn leads to a better decision about the optimal size for the reserve with respect to harvesting. We found that the optimal monitoring time frame is rarely more than 5 years. A higher economic discount rate decreased the optimal monitoring time frame, making the expected benefit of more certainty about parameters in the system negligible compared with the expected gain from earlier exploitation.

Effects of marine reserve protection on the mud crap Scylla serrata in a sex-biased fishery in subtropical Australia

The impact of sex-biased fishing and marine reserve protection on the mud crab Scylla serrata was examined by comparing the catch rates (catch-per-unit-effort, CPUE), mean size, sex ratios and movement of crabs in 2 coastal marine reserves (1.9 and 5.7 km(2)) and 4 fished non-reserve sites in subtropical Australia. Five years after closure, both marine reserves supported higher catch rates and a larger mean size of S. serrata than non-reserve sites. Males dominated catches of S. serrata in both marine reserves, where CPUE was at least twice as high within the reserves compared to non-reserve sites. Male crabs were also 10% larger in the reserves compared to adjacent fished areas, and of the total male catch, over 70% were equal to or greater than legal size compared to less than 50% outside the reserves. The sex ratio of S. serrata was skewed towards females in all nonreserve sites, which was most likely a result of the ban on taking female S. serrata in Moreton Bay. As only male crabs of >= 15 cm CW made up the S. serrata fishery in Moreton Bay, sex ratios of mature male and female crabs were examined, revealing a strong skew (2:1) towards mature males in both marine reserves. Of the 472 S. serrata captured in this study, 338 were tagged in the reserves in order to document movement of the crabs between the reserve and non-reserve sites. Of the 37 recaptured crabs, 73% were recorded inside the reserves, with some spillover (i.e. cross-boundary movement) of crabs recorded in fished areas. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of small (< 6 km(2)) marine reserves for sex-biased exploited fisheries species.

Efficiency, costs and trade-offs in marine reserve system design

With marine biodiversity conservation the primary goal for reserve planning initiatives, a site's conservation potential is typically evaluated on the basis of the biological and physical features it contains. By comparison, socio-economic information is seldom a formal consideration of the reserve system design problem and generally limited to an assessment of threats, vulnerability or compatibility with surrounding uses. This is perhaps surprising given broad recognition that the success of reserve establishment is highly dependent on widespread stakeholder and community support. Using information on the spatial distribution and intensity of commercial rock lobster catch in South Australia, we demonstrate the capacity of mathematical reserve selection procedures to integrate socio-economic and biophysical information for marine reserve system design. Analyses of trade-offs highlight the opportunities to design representative, efficient and practical marine reserve systems that minimise potential loss to commercial users. We found that the objective of minimising the areal extent of the reserve system was barely compromised by incorporating economic design constraints. With a small increase in area (< 3%) and boundary length (< 10%), the economic impact of marine reserves on the commercial rock lobster fishery was reduced by more than a third. We considered also how a reserve planner might prioritise conservation areas using information on a planning units selection frequency. We found that selection frequencies alone were not a reliable guide for the selection of marine reserve systems, but could be used with approaches such as summed irreplaceability to direct conservation effort for efficient marine reserve design.

Accounting for uncertainty in marine reserve design

Ecosystems and the species and communities within them are highly complex systems that defy predictions with any degree of certainty. Managing and conserving these systems in the face of uncertainty remains a daunting challenge, particularly with respect to developing networks of marine reserves. Here we review several modelling frameworks that explicitly acknowledge and incorporate uncertainty, and then use these methods to evaluate reserve spacing rules given increasing levels of uncertainty about larval dispersal distances. Our approach finds similar spacing rules as have been proposed elsewhere - roughly 20-200 km - but highlights several advantages provided by uncertainty modelling over more traditional approaches to developing these estimates. In particular, we argue that uncertainty modelling can allow for (1) an evaluation of the risk associated with any decision based on the assumed uncertainty; (2) a method for quantifying the costs and benefits of reducing uncertainty; and (3) a useful tool for communicating to stakeholders the challenges in managing highly uncertain systems. We also argue that incorporating rather than avoiding uncertainty will increase the chances of successfully achieving conservation and management goals.

Sensitivity of marine-reserve design to the spatial resolution of socioeconomic data

Socioeconomic considerations should have an important place in reserve design, Systematic reserve-selection tools allow simultaneous optimization for ecological objectives while minimizing costs but are seldom used to incorporate socioeconomic costs in the reserve-design process. The sensitivity of this process to biodiversity data resolution has been studied widely but the issue of socioeconomic data resolution has not previously been considered. We therefore designed marine reserves for biodiversity conservation with the constraint of minimizing commercial fishing revenue losses and investigated how economic data resolution affected the results. Incorporating coarse-resolution economic data from official statistics generated reserves that were only marginally less costly to the fishery than those designed with no attempt to minimize economic impacts. An intensive survey yielded fine-resolution data that, when incorporated in the design process, substantially reduced predicted fishery losses. Such an approach could help minimize fisher displacement because the least profitable grounds are selected for the reserve. Other work has shown that low-resolution biodiversity data can lead to underestimation of the conservation value of some sites, and a risk of overlooking the most valuable areas, and we have similarly shown that low-resolution economic data can cause underestimation of the profitability of some sites and a risk of inadvertently including these in the reserve. Detailed socioeconomic data are therefore an essential input for the design of cost-effective reserve networks.

Climate change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs

The diversity, frequency, and scale of human impacts on coral reefs are increasing to the extent that reefs are threatened globally. Projected increases in carbon dioxide and temperature over the next 50 years exceed the conditions under which coral reefs have flourished over the past half-million years. However, reefs will change rather than disappear entirely, with some species already showing far greater tolerance to climate change and coral bleaching than others. International integration of management strategies that support reef resilience need to be vigorously implemented, and complemented by strong policy decisions to reduce the rate of global warming.

Intertidal habitat conservation: identifying conservation targets in the absence of detailed biological information

1. Growing concern associated with threats to the marine environment has resulted in an increased demand for marine reserves that conserve representative and adequate examples of biodiversity. Often, the decisions about where to locate reserves must be made in the absence of detailed information on the patterns of distribution of the biota. Alternative approaches are required that include defining habitats using surrogates for biodiversity. Surrogate measures of biodiversity enable decisions about where to locate marine reserves to be made more reliably in the absence of detailed data on the distribution of species. 2. Intertidal habitat types derived using physical properties of the shoreline were used as a surrogate for intertidal biodiversity to assist with the identification of sites for inclusion in a candidate system of intertidal marine reserves for 17 463 km of the mainland coast of Queensland, Australia. This represents the first systematic approach, on essentially one-dimensional data, using fine-scale (tens to hundreds of metres) intertidal habitats to identify a system of marine reserves for such a large length of coast. A range of solutions would provide for the protection of a representative example of intertidal habitats in Queensland. 3. The design and planning of marine and terrestrial protected areas systems should not be undertaken independently of each other because it is likely to lead to inadequate representation of intertidal habitats in either system. The development of reserve systems specially designed to protect intertidal habitats should be integrated into the design of terrestrial and marine protected area systems. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Incentive-based approaches to sustainable fisheries

The failures of traditional target-species management have led many to propose an ecosystem approach to fisheries to promote sustainability. The ecosystem approach is necessary, especially to account for fishery-ecosystem interactions, but by itself is not sufficient to address two important factors contributing to unsustainable fisheries: inappropriate incentives bearing on fishers and the ineffective governance that frequently exists in commercial, developed fisheries managed primarily by total-harvest limits and input controls. We contend that much greater emphasis must be placed on fisher motivation when managing fisheries. Using evidence from more than a dozen natural experiments in commercial fisheries, we argue that incentive-based approaches that better specify community and individual harvest or territorial rights and price ecosystem services and that are coupled with public research, monitoring, and effective oversight promote sustainable fisheries.