MPA Policy and Climate Change: Seizing Synergies and Reducing Risks

Planning and implementing Marine Protected Areas requires negotiation and compromise among experts of many types, stakeholders with various perspectives, and regulators with diverse accountabilities.  Consensus is rarely found quickly on details of desired outcomes nor on the best pathways and measures to achieve those outcomes.  The first part of the talk highlights where synergies among the interests of different participants are likely to be found, and where impediments to consensus are likely to lurk. It places these in the context of global policy frameworks for MPAs.   Given the complexity of the necessary negotiations and notwithstanding the value of adaptive management, once the parameters and management plan of an MPA have been accepted, revisions are not easy.  With ocean ecosystems being impacted by climate change, negotiations for MPAs to meet present conditions may not deliver expected benefits in the future.  However negotiations become even more complex if they are based on models of future climate scenarios. Greater uncertainties about future outcomes can amplify inherent differences in risk tolerances of various participants for specific outcomes.  I consider how these added complexities may affect the synergies on which consensus can be built and the impediments to reaching agreements.  Finally I look at how well existing policy frameworks can accommodate these additional effects.