Comparison of approaches to management of large marine areas

Abstract

Large marine areas, based partly or wholly on biogeographic and ecological criteria, are widely held to be the preferred way to define areas for Ecosystem Based Management (EBM). We took five commonly used approaches to defining and intervening in Large Areas for Marine Management (LAMMs) and compared their success in developing countries in four aspects: achieving marine conservation outcomes; generating donor funding and private investment; being widely applied, and becoming sustainable in financial, institutional, social and political terms. In reviewing outcomes we used Olsen (2003)’s framework of 1st Order (enabling conditions such as legal instruments, policies, plans, social context, capacities), 2nd Order (changes in behaviour, enforcement, changing catch levels, treatment of waste), and 3rd Order (results in terms of biodiversity, species populations, water quality, income, social benefits) outcomes. To keep the study manageable, we restricted our study to the coastal and marine environment, and did not compare the approaches in terms of how they address connectivity between marine and terrestrial environments, including watershed management