Principles for climate resilience are prevalent in marine protected area management plans

Abstract

Climate change is threatening marine systems, and its widespread and dynamic effects are creating challenges for designing and managing marine protected areas (MPAs). The majority of recommendations for climate‐resilient MPAs focus on enhancing ecological resilience to disturbance and updating management strategies to respond as changes occur. Here, we assess how existing recommendations for climate resilience are applied in real‐world MPA management, using criteria from five key management components: objectives, assessments, design, monitoring, and management. Our review evaluates 172 management plans for 555 MPAs across 52 countries and written in nine languages. We find that MPA management plans contain many underlying scientific and management principles for promoting resilience to climate change, even when “climate change” or related terms are not specifically included: plans include long‐term objectives (93.6%), threat‐reduction strategies (99.4%), monitoring programs (97.7%), and adaptive management (93%). However, there is substantial variation in the degree to which plans explicitly incorporate climate change into their strategies, from not mentioning it at all (21.5%) to developing detailed climate change‐specific action plans (20.9%), with most somewhere in between. In addition to identifying common gaps across management plans, we also provide practical examples of activities MPA managers are undertaking to address climate change.

Climate change reduces long‐term population benefits from no‐take marine protected areas through selective pressures on species movement

“…Generally, species undergoing range shifts are expected to move out of MPAs (Gilmour et al., 2022; Weinert et al., 2021), therefore, as the world moves towards implementing 30 × 30 commitments (to protect 30% of the planet by 2030; Jones et al., 2020; O'Leary et al., 2016), carefully designed MPA networks that can serve as stepping‐stones, especially for lower movement extent fish, may be required. While many MPA networks are currently in place, most (86%) were not designed nor are currently managed for climate change (Lopazanski et al., 2023), and many are known to have a high likelihood of climate change impacts (Kyprioti et al., 2021). Due to uncertainty in climate change effects on MPAs, designing MPA networks for both connectivity and a portfolio effect with both diversity and replication of habitats may be the best way to ensure species are protected now and in the future (Hopkins et al., 2016; McLeod et al., 2009).…”

Understanding vessel noise across a network of marine protected areas

“…Protected areas often function as a part of a network to achieve overarching goals of biodiversity conservation (Hoffmann, 2022 ) and climate resilience (Lopazanski et al, 2023 ) while supporting the human communities reliant on the resources within each protected area. To bolster these goals, efforts are underway to increase the global coverage of protected areas through the “30×30” initiative, an international call for protection of 30% of marine and terrestrial habitats by 2030 (Gurney et al, 2023 ).…”

Enhancing climate change planning and adaptive management in marine protected areas through targets, thresholds, and social-ecological objectives

“…Enormous efforts are underway to expand marine areas under protection globally, which is an impetus for increasing the resilience of MPAs to climate pressures (Wilson et al, 2020;Peterson St-Laurent et al, 2021;Schuurman et al, 2022;Lopazanski et al, 2023). As observations of ecological and social-cultural responses attributed to changing ocean conditions continue to accumulate (Pecl et al, 2017;Frölicher and Laufkötter, 2018;Thompson et al, 2023), so do novel means of incorporating changing ocean conditions within MPAs' operational management to proactively establish a structure that can accommodate change while maximizing performance (Wilson et al, 2020;O'Regan et al, 2021).…”

“…To navigate management requirements and foster resilience, MPAs have broadly adopted an adaptive management approach (Geyer et al, 2017;Tony, 2020;O'Regan et al, 2021;Lopazanski et al, 2023). Adaptive management is an iterative decision-making framework, in which management objectives and processes are responsive to changing conditions and/or information gaps (Walters and Hilborn, 1978).…”