Question: What goals can MCAs achieve?

Answer: Marine Conservation Agreements can achieve three goals:

Wall-to-wall Marine Conservation Agreement (MCA) projects along every ocean coast in the world is not a realistic or desirable goal. However, MCAs, in addition to Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), area-wide laws and policies, and other marine protection efforts can complement each other to establish more comprehensive marine protection within ecological networks. Also, acquiring the ability to protect and restore specific ocean and coastal targets through MCAs often gets conservation organizations seats at negotiation tables as vested stakeholders when agencies are determining the laws, rules, policies, and plans that may degrade or conserve ocean and coastal resources at much larger scales.

Bluepoints boundary. Photo courtesy The Nature Conservancy, Long Island New York.

Protecting and Restoring Ocean and Coastal Targets

Conservation organizations have protected millions of terrestrial acres in many parts of the world through private actions and agreements with the owners, managers and users of important lands and resources. In some cases the agreements lead to fee or less-than fee-simple ownership, in other cases the owners, managers or users agree to new ways of undertaking activities. If private conservation organizations can protect and manage important biological resources on uplands through agreements, why should they not be able to do so for conservation targets lying within ocean and coastal waters?

While MCAs cannot be applied in all places or under all circumstances, they are a tool that private entities can use to acquire or direct activities that affect specific ocean and coastal sites and resources. MCAs can usually be enforced through civil or criminal codes and defended in legal court systems. MCAs can also give private conservation organizations the ability to take the lead at sites to identify and undertake restoration, management, and protection activities.

Serving within Integrated Ecological Networks Marine Protection

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) improve and protect many aspects of marine biodiversity. As such, MPAs receive much attention as one of the primary strategies to conserve ocean and coastal resources. Traditionally, MPAs were viewed more or less in isolation of other marine conservation strategies. However, strategies such as MCAs in addition to area-wide laws and regulations should be assessed to determine how they can complement MPAs. Together, MPAs and MCAs can protect important places while public laws and regulations can tie them together. Comprehensive assessments are needed to determine how MPAs, MCAs, and public laws and regulations can work together within integrated ecological networks to fill gaps in ocean and coastal protection.

For more information on marine protected areas, see the World Commission on Protected Areas Marine Program, the U.S. National Marine Protected Areas Center, and The Nature Conservancy’s work on MPAs and resilience.

Establishing NGOs as Vested Stakeholders

Many local, state, and federal agencies have multiple and often conflicting mandates for managing ocean and coastal areas. When agencies assess, discuss, develop, and implement new or existing laws, rules, policies, and plans affecting the oceans and coasts they often reach out to direct owners, managers and users of the lands and resources for input. While some agencies have procedural guidance concerning programmatic outreach, adjacent landowners, lessees, and managers in and around the affected areas are more often than not targeted for input.

When private conservation groups acquire or direct interests in ocean and coastal areas through MCAs, they are no longer relegated to educational, watchdog, policy, or research roles. As landowners, lessees and managers, private conservation groups have a vested stake to defend and represent when agencies contemplate decisions through planning and policy development that may affect their rights and interests. In addition, by entering into MCAs, private conservation groups begin to change the management paradigm from the historical focus of commercial and extractive use to a more balanced approach that includes conservation. In this manner, conservation for biodiversity and environmental services becomes a legitimized use of ocean and coastal areas that can compete with other uses.

By establishing seats at negotiation tables, conservation groups can collaborate with local communities and management agencies to legitimize conservation and balance uses of ocean and coastal areas at-scale through several means:

• Conservation Action Planning
• Ecosystem-based Management
• Land-Sea Integrated Ecoregional Assessments
• Large-scale Restoration
• Resilient MPAs
• Zoning

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