The Practitioner's Toolkit for Marine Conservation Agreements (MCAs) was developed to help conservation organizations determine:

• What MCAs are
• When MCAs can help abate threats to ocean and coastal species, habitats, and ecosystems
• How to plan and proceed with MCA projects

Marine Conservation Agreements include any formal or informal understanding in which one or more parties commit to delivering explicit economic incentives in exchange for one or more other parties committing to take certain actions, refrain from certain actions, or transfer certain rights and responsibilities to achieve agreed-upon ocean or coastal conservation goals.

MCAs have also been called and are often associated with:

• Conservation Incentive Agreements
• Leasing and ownership in ocean and coastal waters
• Proprietary rights of submerged lands
• Marine market-based strategies
• Marine payments for ecosystem services
• Marine protected areas

The Overview elaborates more on MCAs.

The primary navigation method for the toolkit is in the left column of each page. The major components of the toolkit are organized in a logical progression of ideas and phases:

• Overview provides the basic information about MCAs to help you get started, then dispels myths and provides definitions of important terms.
• Field Guide can be downloaded in its entirety or reviewed online section-by-section by practitioners wishing to evaluate and implement new MCA projects.
• Field Projects can be reviewed for lessons learned and used as illustrative examples with potential funders and authorizing entities.
• Country Analyses and U.S. State Analyses provide information on opportunities for MCAs and management frameworks in specific geographies.
• U.S. State Maps is a comprehensive review of available spatial data and maps for U.S. ocean coast states—information that is necessary to determine ownership and use of ocean and coastal areas.
• Resources provides supplemental information useful to practitioners developing project proposals, such as U.S. state agency contact information, funding sources, MCA-related publications, other online conservation tools, sample documents and agreements, and workshop information.

Finally, for assistance navigating the toolkit, users can see the Help link on the upper right of each page or Contact Us.

If you are short on time you can quickly download one or more of the toolkit’s marketing or informational documents:

• MCA Toolkit Fact Sheet (pdf, 840k)
• MCA Field Guide (pdf, 1,885)
• Marine Conservation Agreements: An Introductory Presentation (streaming video)
• MCA Feasibility Analysis Project Overview — English, Indonesia, Spanish (pdfs, ~270k)
• MCA Workshop proceedings (pdf, 2,018k)
• Leasing and Ownership of Ocean and Coastal Resources (pdf, 264k)
• The Law & Policy of Conservation Leasing and Ownership (pdf, 673k)
• Marketing postcard (pdf, 92k)

The Nature Conservancy and several of our partners recognize the need to expand the tools we use to protect marine biodiversity. In light of this, we developed the Practitioner's Toolkit for Marine Conservation Agreements. The toolkit was originally launched in January 2008 and is continually being improved upon with new information. Without the aid of our partners, the toolkit would not be what it is today. Read more >>