Overview

Local fishermen in the Pacific coast fishing town of Puerto López, Ecuador, located near Machalilla National Park. Photo: Mark Godfrey/TNC

Over the past several years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have realized that the creation of formal protected areas may not be sufficient to protect ocean and coastal biodiversity, particularly in areas where rights have already been granted to specific owners and users. To address this, NGOs are increasingly using Marine Conservation Agreements (MCAs) to complement other marine and coastal protection efforts.

This one-page overview introduces the MCA concept. For more overview information on MCAs, see the sub-sections on: Basics, Myths, and Definitions.

Quick Summary

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.

The summary table below identifies the major elements and variables of MCAs. MCAs can be entered into by governments, communities, private entities, and private individuals. They are based on agreed upon terms and conditions, are often bottom-up approaches, and include quid-pro-quo incentives wherein all parties receive benefits.

Elements and Variables of Marine Conservation Agreements
Mechanisms		Parties (governance)		Benefits		Examples
Formal	Informal	Grantor (right‑holder)	Grantee	Incentive	Protection
• Purchase & sale • Lease • Easement • License • Permit • Concession • Contract	• Verbal • Handshake • Letter	• Government • Private entity • Indigenous people & local community	• NGOs • Communities • Ecotourism companies • Aqua-culturalists • Other for-profits	• Direct payments • Social services • Infrastructure • Employment • Culture • Pride	• Ownership • Management • Use   -access   -harvest   -development	• Chile • Costa Rica • Ecuador • Mexico • Tanzania • Tropical Isl. • U.S.
Duration can be Defined or Undefined		Lead Implementer can be Right-Holder or Grantee		• Behavior changes • Laws/regulations • Private MPAs • Community MPAs • State/Fed'l MPAs

Common examples of MCAs include leases, licenses, easements, management agreements, purchase and sale agreements, concessions, and contracts. NGOs have used MCAs to help manage specific areas, harvesting methods, and access to resources. These efforts have protected important marine biodiversity while positioning NGOs as vested and solution-oriented stakeholders with governments and communities responsible for decision-making.

International Treaties and Conventions

International treaties and conventions that address ocean management and conservation issues have also been referred to as Marine Conservation Agreements1, or as International Ocean Agreements. This toolkit does not discuss or label these types of broader, nation-to-nation agreements since they are typically high-level, top-down, and do not include NGOs and local users as potential signatories.

Similarity with Terrestrial and Freshwater Strategies

MCAs are in many ways quite similar to the widely used and understood conservation practices that employ traditional upland acquisitions, conservation easements and freshwater rights acquisitions. Upland acquisitions, conservation easements and MCAs all give grantees (i.e., conservation organizations) the right to protect or direct management of sites and habitat features that may otherwise be degraded from destructive human activities and development. Similar to freshwater rights acquisitions in which water is left in streams for conservation purposes, MCAs establish conservation (i.e., no use in the minds of some) as a legitimate use that can be acquired or directed.

The obvious difference between MCAs and upland acquisitions and conservation easements is that MCAs are applied to areas lying under ocean and coastal waters—areas normally viewed as open to free and unfettered access by the public. In many (but not all) cases, MCAs are applied to areas that are publicly-owned or managed. When applied to public areas, MCAs differ from upland acquisitions and conservation easements in that the public may continue to have rights to the areas, the agreements typically have a specific term (or time period) associated with them and they usually require some form of active, participatory management, as opposed to simply preventing property from being developed.

Relationship between MCAs and MPAs

Marine Conservation Agreements and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are different, but can often lead to the similar things. Formal MPAs are often established by government entities through law or policy. Conversely, MCAs are established between different entities, usually a resource owner or user and an NGO. Both MPAs and MCAs, however, can be used to protect specific sites and resources. MCAs can also be used to complement and augment the number and effectiveness of formal MPAs when the establishment of additional MPAs is not possible. Under some circumstances, MCAs can be used as catalysts for the formal establishment of MPAs or can provide a mechanism for local stakeholder involvement in collaborative management of MPAs.

MCA Field Projects

There are numerous existing MCA projects throughout the globe. One of the best known MCA projects is the Chumbe Island Coral Park in Tanzania. Other examples include The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC’s) 13,000-acre Great South Bay Project on Long Island, New York, and the 180,000 sq km Phoenix Island Protected Area which was established in part based on a “reverse fishing license”—an agreement being developed by the Government of Kiribati, Conservation International (CI), and the New England Aquarium. For additional projects, see the Field Projects in the toolkit.

Current Limitations and Strategic Next Steps

Although the potential application of MCAs is broad and significant, the strategy is currently underutilized. This is due in part to the fact that MCA practitioners do not generally communicate among each other for information exchange or collaboration. As a result, MCAs remain insufficiently understood and applied by the marine conservation community. To reverse this, TNC and partners are working to:

• Promote a willingness to pay for conservation: We must develop, advertise and make available economic markets for biodiversity conservation, which will require NGOs to be intermediaries between the global demand and potential suppliers of biodiversity conservation services.
• Undertake demonstration projects: The most effective way to spread awareness of MCAs and persuade various stakeholders of its promise is to continue implementing pilot projects. Additional successes will broaden financial support for MCAs among donors, encourage governments to embrace the tool in policies and legislation, cultivate implementation capacity within the conservation NGO community, and build confidence among local communities that participating in conservation can yield tangible benefits.
• Educate donors: In the short term, the greatest constraint to application of MCAs may be funding, especially in terms of the types of funding available for conservation. We must promote awareness of the long-term recurrent costs of conservation management among the donor community, placing a strong emphasis on the essential role of dedicated endowments to support individual projects into the distant future.
• Exploit development synergies: Given that many sites of conservation interest are in poor rural areas that are also of interest to development institutions, there is significant potential for collaboration with other NGOs, government bodies, and bilateral or multilateral agencies receiving development funding. Scaling up the use of MCAs will benefit greatly from concerted efforts to seek out opportunities for collaboration with mainstream development organizations.
• Foster communication and consistency: The concerns raised about MCAs often reflect misunderstandings about the approach. Therefore it is important that organizations working on MCAs continuously engage each other, other conservation organizations and governments to ensure clear and consistent articulation of the rationale and application of the tool.

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