Incorporation of Socio-Economic Features' Ranking in Multicriteria Analysis Based on Ecosystem Services for Marine Protected Area Planning

Abstract

Developed decades ago for spatial choice problems related to zoning in the urban planning field, multicriteria analysis (MCA) has more recently been applied to environmental conflicts and presented in several documented cases for the creation of protected area management plans. Its application is considered here for the development of zoning as part of a proposed marine protected area management plan. The case study incorporates specially-explicit conservation features while considering stakeholder preferences, expert opinion and characteristics of data quality. It involves the weighting of criteria using a modified analytical hierarchy process. Experts ranked physical attributes which include socio-economically valued physical features. The parameters used for the ranking of (physical) attributes important for socio-economic reasons are derived from the field of ecosystem services assessment. Inclusion of these feature values results in protection that emphasizes those areas closest to shore, most likely because of accessibility and familiarity parameters and because of data biases. Therefore, other spatial conservation prioritization methods should be considered to supplement the MCA and efforts should be made to improve data about ecosystem service values farther from shore. Otherwise, the MCA method allows incorporation of expert and stakeholder preferences and ecosystem services values while maintaining the advantages of simplicity and clarity.

Participatory multi-criteria decision analysis for prioritizing impacts in environmental and social impact assessments

“…However, recently MCDA has emerged as a widely used tool for supporting multi-stakeholder decision processes, as well as a practical method for dealing with the social dimensions of conflict since it can be combined with participatory approaches (Banville et al 1998;Davies, Bryce, and Redpath 2013;Munda 2004;Portman, Shabtay-Yanai, and Zanzuri 2016;Proctor 2004;Stirling 2006).…”

Assessment of marine protected areas in the East China Sea using a management effectiveness tracking tool

“…For MNRs II, although protected areas have advantages such as management plans and ecological services (Fu, 2007;Portman et al, 2016), active resource management and scientific cooperation, they suffer from insufficient public budget revenues and mutually beneficial programs, and lack of communication with stakeholders (Li & Tang, 2012;Tang et al, 2014). In summary, two recommendations are proposed: 1) A community compensation mechanism should be established to gain the support and cooperation of residents in the surrounding communities (Rosa et al, 2004;Quan et al, 2009); and 2) Communication with stakeholders and community residents should be strengthened, increasing the participation of local residents in conservation management aspects.…”

Reflections on the ecosystem services of whales and valuing their contribution to human well-being

“…This would be essential in order to understand the sustainability and human well-being implications of different marine development permutations. As an informative to environmental decision-making, MCDA has already been applied in diverse marine contexts including, in recent times, marine current energy generation (Ramachandran and Takagi 2015), climate change risk assessments (Rizzi et al 2014), a sustainability evaluation of marine fuels (Ren and Liang 2017), marine protected area planning (Portman et al 2016), and determining the optimal location for fish farming (Dapueto et al 2015).…”