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Marine Conservation Agreement Toolkit Development

The Practitioner's Toolkit for Marine Conservation Agreements represents a consolidation and synthesis of information and lessons learned from numerous field projects, reports, research efforts, and workshops. Originally launched in January 2008 by The Nature Conservancy as the Practitioner's Toolkit for Leasing and Ownership in Ocean and Coastal Waters, it has since evolved and expanded functionally and geographically into the Marine Conservation Agreements Toolkit.

Several partners helped improve the scope and substance of the toolkit by contributing information from their field projects, cooperating with research, lending financial support, and developing consistent, programmatic guidance. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center, Roger Williams University School of Law, and the Coastal States Organization participated in legal and spatial data research for U.S. ocean coast states. The Conservation and Community Investment Forum and Conservation International helped refine the MCA process and also assisted with developing and hosting workshops. Several state chapters of the Audubon Society provided project-specific information as did numerous other project managers.

More about The Nature Conservancy's Efforts

The Nature Conservancy preserves the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth. The Conservancy, working in all 50 U.S. states and over 30 countries throughout the globe, recently set a goal for the year 2015 to work with its partners to ensure the effective conservation of at least 10% of every major habitat type on Earth. The Conservancy is undertaking several strategies to accomplish this goal. One such strategy is to assess, develop, and foster innovative conservation mechanisms through global programs, such as the Global Marine Team.

The Global Marine Team

The Conservancy's Global Marine Team helps design resilient marine protected areas and implement in-water habitat and shellfish restoration. It also develops priority-setting strategies (using ecoregional assessments with MARXAN, gap analyses, and ecosystem-based management) and evaluates incentives-based conservation strategies such as Marine Conservation Agreements.

Marine Conservation Agreements / Leasing and Ownership

The Conservancy's Marine Conservation Agreement strategy evolved from the lessons learned regarding leasing and ownership of lands and resources within ocean and coastal waters. This work began when the Conservancy discovered that some of its upland ownership projects in the United States, which were located along coastal shorelines, included intertidal and subtidal lands within the deeds. In these early cases, the intertidal and subtidal ownership was often not the primary resource targeted for conservation. In some cases it was not obvious that the intertidal or subtidal areas were included as part of the real estate transaction. As the Conservancy started to recognize its ownership of intertidal and subtidal areas, it also began to realize that many similar areas had been purchased or leased for hundreds of years by private, commercial enterprises. The Global Marine Team consequently began to explore the large-scale, long-term possibilities for private organizations to lease or own lands and resources within ocean and coastal waters for conservation purposes. With this exploration came the understanding that many conservation organizations around the world were involved in the acquisition and management of intertidal and subtidal areas through some form of agreement, whether it be a lease, deed, permit, license, or concession. Consequently, Marine Conservation Agreements were born.