Resilience-principles

The root cause of climate change is increased greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, a threat that no MPA can directly address. However, MPAs, if managed effectively, can help to ease the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems (i.e., supporting adaptation/resilience). They may also help mitigate climate change through the protection and restoration of marine ecosystems that sequester CO2 (mangroves, seagrasses, saltmarshes). To do this, managers must plan and design MPA systems with considerations of key resilience principles.

Planning for resilience includes ensuring sites incorporate key resilience principles (e.g., protect a diversity (and replicates) of key species and habitats, reduce local threats to support resistance and recovery from damage, manage adaptively to accommodate uncertainty and change, etc.)

Social resilience is another key factor to consider which includes ensuring local stakeholders are informed about climate impacts, have access to alternative livelihoods, presence of networks and institutions that support adaptation, etc. In many cases, a single MPA may not be able to achieve all the desired results to build resilience. For example, the area may not contain sufficient replicates of representative habitats or climate-resilient species, or restrictive zones may not be feasible based on community needs. In such cases, expansion of the site into MPA networks or alongside complementary management approaches outside the MPA boundaries may be necessary to build resilience of key ecosystems and communities.

Threat Reduction

Reducing threats to the resources and values the site is designed to protect is a key component of resilience-based management. Threats may include destructive fishing practices, over-harvesting, land-based sources of pollution, and climate change. Ideally the threats and root causes have been thoroughly identified and prioritized through the planning process. This allows threat reduction activities to focus on the most important challenges that provide the greatest chance of supporting objectives of the site. Threat reduction activities will range from outreach with stakeholder groups to foster specific behaviors and compliance, to implementing programs to develop sustainable livelihoods, to enforcement of rules. 

While prioritizing actions identified in a well-developed management plan is advised, there may also be emerging threats that were not planned for but require immediate action. For example, many MPAs in the Caribbean have recently been faced with a new disease called stony coral tissue loss disease that can devastate reefs quickly. Good management practices are still being explored and have required that managers act in partnership with governments, NGOs, and academic institutions to trial new interventions to address the disease and minimize its local impact. 

In these situations, there may be no point in focusing management capacity to implement planned activities when a new threat may undermine any potential progress. As such, implementation requires day-to-day decisions that can benefit from some flexibility to adapt. 

This flexibility to emerging and urgent issues follow resilience-based management principles. For threats derived from outside the site (e.g., land-based pollution) partnerships may be needed with agencies/groups that have appropriate authorities to address the issue. In many cases, good management practices exist for how to address various threats that can be adapted to meet the needs of local circumstances.