It’s Just Conservation: To What Extent Are Marine Protected Areas in the Irish Sea Equitably Governed and Managed?

Abstract

It is not enough to simply designate a protected area. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11, these sites should be governed and managed effectively and equitably. Equitable (i.e., fair and inclusive) conservation is vital to ensuring effective protection of natural resources while maintaining human well-being. Yet, equity tends to be overlooked in protected area assessments. Three marine protected areas (MPAs) in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland were selected to assess equitable governance and management in the Irish Sea. This is one of the first studies to assess equity across multiple stakeholder groups in MPAs. The Site-level Assessment for Governance and Equity (SAGE) toolkit, developed by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) to address the gap in equity assessments, was used to evaluate equitable governance and management in these MPAs. Based on the three dimensions of equity (recognition, distribution, and procedure), SAGE contains Likert-scale questions to assess good governance by evaluating how different stakeholder groups perceive their protected area’s management and how included they feel in decision-making. Quantitative data from SAGE is complemented by qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to understand the impact MPA management has on local communities and MPA users. The results of this study reveal a lack of communication between MPA authorities and local stakeholders. They highlight the need for co-management in the form of inclusive partnerships as an alternative to the current top-down governance approach favoed in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Relating Country-Level Governance and Tree Cover Loss in Sub-Saharan African Protected Areas: Identifying Knowledge Gaps and a More Nuanced Perspective

“…There is increasing interest and funding made available to assess and work toward improving site-level governance in area-based conservation projects, e.g., as part of the IUCN Green List program (Borrini-Feyerabend et al, 2013;Franks et al, 2018;Bennett et al, 2020;IUCN, 2021;Springer et al, 2021). The participatory site-level governance assessment tools developed by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and partners and that are being piloted across the world provide a practical and context-sensitive framework to kick off and eventually monitor governance transformations from the bottom-up (Echeverri et al, 2021;International Institute for Environment and Development [IIED], 2021a,b;Schéré et al, 2021).…”

Perceived Social Impacts of Protected Areas, Their Influence on Local Public Support and Their Distribution across Social Groups: Evidence from the Eifel National Park, Germany, during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…These differences in the type and distribution of impacts have been increasingly researched in the literature, with several scholars emphasising the need to focus on social equity issues [8,17,18]. This is an important area of research considering that the unequal distribution of costs and benefits between stakeholders may cause new conflicts between different social groups, and erode public support resulting in inefficient, ineffective or iniquitous governance of protected areas [19,20].…”