In MPA management everything comes down to effective communication. Whether we’re working on law enforcement, fisheries management, biophysical monitoring, management planning or climate change, good communication is at the heart of MPA management. Good communication can drive stakeholder engagement, build stewardship and shape partnerships. It’s also critical to making progress on sustainable financing.

Here we address some considerations for targeted and strategic communications in support of MPA sustainable financing.

Targeted MPA financing communications

To support efforts to raise reliable, long-term and unrestricted financing, MPAs need to have effective communications with some or all of the following target audiences:

If local recreational users of your MPA also pay user fees then the same communications guidance applies. Where local recreational users aren’t charged fees or receive a preferential rate, there’s an opportunity to communicate to them that this is a benefit of the overall conservation finance strategy. You could also leverage this as an additional incentive for local compliance with other MPA regulations and to encourage local stakeholder participation in MPA management.

• Filmmakers and researchers/visiting scientists. In the interests of further positive communications about the MPA, you might strategically elect to waive fees for trusted filmmakers who will help to promote your message and the MPA’s public image. Similarly, you might offer reduced fees to scientific researchers who can provide information that’s useful for MPA monitoring and decision-making, and especially where they help to generate useful communications about their findings. Conversely, where filmmakers and academic institutions stand to benefit commercially from their activities in the MPA and add to the workload for MPA staff, fees for permits can ensure fair cost- and benefit-sharing.

• Local private sector stakeholders such as hotels, dive shops, tour operators, yacht charter companies and other agencies. Frequent, close communications can help you pursue cash or in-kind donations from this audience, and assist in forming public-private partnerships or agreements that can enhance cost-effectiveness. Regular progress reporting should be part of communications targeted at this audience, and you might need to invest in capacity building in negotiating skills.

Methods for effective MPA communication

In recent years the bar has been raised for MPA communications. Readers/viewers have short attention spans and there is much noise to cut through. The job of content creation and reaching target audiences increasingly demands specialist, dedicated staff. Some MPAs elect to outsource their communications activities to specialist consultants. While this comes with a financial cost, they report that it can be productive in terms of the overall contribution to their sustainable financing (see Brijuni National Park case study).

Whether MPA communications are managed in-house or outsourced, it’s important to be strategic. You should design appropriate messaging and train all MPA staff and any communications consultants so that everyone in the MPA team knows and conveys the desired messaging to target audiences. A strategic communications plan in support of MPA sustainable financing can set this out.

Strategic communications planning sometimes seems like a daunting undertaking. At its simplest, strategic communications means getting the right message for the right audience. A helpful tool to use in crafting the right message is The Message Box exercise (see Figure 1). This tool should be used in the following order.

Audience – identify a specific target audience (and remember the general public is not specific enough!).

Issue – What’s the overarching topic?

Problems – What’s the specific problem or part of the issue you’re addressing?

So what – Why does this matter to your audience? What’s at stake?

Solutions – What would you like the audience to do? What would help solve the problem?

Benefits – How would my audience benefit from resolving this problem?

Figure 1. The Message Box. Source: COMPASS, 2017. Copyright 2017 by COMPASS Science Communication, Inc. Reproduced with permission.

An example for the case of raising donations from divers and sailors who visit a World Heritage site MPA is shown in Table 1. Similarly, you can use The Message Box tool to determine appropriate messaging about sustainable financing for other intended audiences as relevant for your mix of sustainable financing efforts.

Table 1. Raising donations from divers and sailors who visit a World Heritage site MPA – an example application of The Message Box (COMPASS, 2017).

Communications in support of sustainable financing requires some specific skills – talking to the media and negotiating skills likely come to mind, but also think about the person-to-person communications skills that all staff might need to help cultivate MPA friends. Then there are creative skills like graphic design for eye-catching reports, and specialist skills for modern web design and online marketing.

New technology can help you in building effective communications. For example, being able to build a database of visitors through an online fee payment system can provide the basis for online donations, membership drives and crowd-sourcing campaigns. Social media platforms also provide valuable tools for tracking your communications impact. MPA networks such as MPAConnect, PIMPAC and MedPAN provide targeted capacity building in effective communications for their members.