Posted on November, 01 2011

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been an integral component of local, national, and international strategies for fisheries management and biodiversity conservation for decades, yet many aspects of MPA implementation and impacts remain uncertain.

On November 4-6 2010, WWF hosted an international symposium to review the current state of knowledge regarding MPA, laying the foundation for both science-based policy and policy-relevant science. The WWF Fuller Symposium was extremely timely; in October, the 193 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity reaffirmed their commitment to protect 10% of the world’s oceans within MPAs by 2020, underscoring the need for MPA policy action based on the best available science.

The Fuller Symposium had several complementary components, including:

• 1-day invitation-only workshop on the nexus between MPAs and marine spatial planning;
• Numerous side meetings, including key discussions on (a) the role of MPAs in spatially-explicit fisheries management (e.g., TURFs); (b) Coral Triangle Initiative project planning; and (c) scaling up of WWF-US monitoring methodologies from Bird’s Head Seascape to the entire Coral Triangle, Gulf of California, and Mozambique;
• Eight public mini-plenary talks by established scientific luminaries and rising stars, with an opening keynote from Callum Roberts and a closing address by Sylvia Earle serving as thought-provoking bookends to the day;
• Several topical discussion tables, where symposium participants and speakers explored key themes in greater detail;
• An MPA bazaar, which featured posters, exhibits, and information including thesis research, marine management practices and MPA case studies.
• 1-day invitation-only writing workshop, where speakers and WWF organizers (a) drafted a synthesis manuscript for publication in a high impact scientific journal and (b) outlined several policy briefs targeted at specific audiences and events

The symposium talks and discussion with attendees from the marine science and policy community explored what MPAs have achieved, what factors led to success or failure, and what we need to know to become more nimble and effective in MPA creation. The symposium outlined the frontiers of MPA understanding and highlighted questions that need answers to achieve this goal, but also underscored the limitations of science and the challenges of integrating science within policy.

As originally proposed, presentations and discussion focused on three specific themes:

1. ecological frontiers such as spillover, connectivity, and MPAs for pelagic species;
2. social frontiers, such as the role of governance in implementation and socioeconomic impacts of MPAs; and
3. opportunities to push the frontiers of MPA science through impact evaluation and other novel research methods.

Participation at the public talks included ~175 in person attendees and ~ 40 attendees via webcast (from 22 different countries). To ensure that the Symposium will continue to reach a broader audience, WWF has archived the presentations on the web for future viewing and listening.

This Symposium is part of the WWF Conservation Science Program’s long-term research program Solving the Mystery of MPA Performance: Linking Governance, Conservation, and Poverty Alleviation.

To date, this program has produced several innovative research papers and launched a Walton-funded pilot study on the social impacts of MPAs in the Bird’s Head Seascape of Papua, Indonesia. The Fuller Symposium contributed to this research program by capturing the current state of MPA knowledge, highlighting frontiers for future research, synthesizing the evidence base for action, and outlining science-based rules of thumb to guide policy.

Based on these symposium outputs, we will focus the next cohorts of Fuller doctoral and postdoctoral Fellows on key frontiers in MPA science, including impacts, the role of MPAs in marine spatial planning, and potential for MPAs to advance rights-based fisheries management.

Through these Fellows, and in our own research, we hope to scale up our investments in MPA science in the near term, in order to meet the emerging needs for science that supports government efforts to meet the CBD 2020 target of 10% MPA coverage.

Solving this “MPA Mystery” is the flagship study of the new WWF Conservation Impact Initiative. The Impact Initiative – one of five focal areas for science at WWF-US – is designed to figure out “what works, what doesn’t, and why” for key conservation strategies – especially where evidence for effectiveness is contested or still emerging.

Our portfolio also includes studies that will examine the impact of communal conservancies on wildlife and livelihoods in Namibia, the conservation impacts of FSC certification, and the impacts of freshwater protected areas. We launched the Initiative at the Fuller Symposium reception on November 5, in order to raise awareness of, interest in, and support for impact evaluation at WWF and across the conservation community.