Abstract
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are globally important environmental management tools that provide protection from the effects of human exploitation and activities, supporting the conservation of marine biological diversity, habitats, ecosystems and the processes they host, as well as resources in a broad sense. Consequently, they are also expected to manage and enhance marine ecosystem services and material, non-material, consumptive and non-consumptive goods, and benefits for humans. There is however certain confusion on what constitutes an ecosystem service, and it is not always easy to distinguish between them and societal benefits. The main nuance is that an ecosystem service is the aptitude an ecosystem has or develops naturally or as consequence of a management action, and that manifests through its own properties (productivity, diversity, stability, quality of its key parameters, etc.), while a societal benefit is the economic or other profitability (emotional, educational, scientific, etc.) that humans obtain from said service or quality. In this work, 268 publications, together with our own experiences in the different investigations carried out in the MPAs that are part of the BiodivERsA3-2015-21 RESERVEBENEFIT European project, have been selected, reviewed and discussed to analyze the knowledge status of the expected ecosystem services of MPAs and the societal benefits derived from them, sometimes providing information on their evidence, when they exist. We define and classify the effects of protection, ecosystem services and societal benefits and elaborate a conceptual model of the cause-effect relationships between them.
Highlights
Conservation of the marine environment–its physical and ecological functioning and its biodiversity–is of utmost importance for maintaining global natural processes of the planet, regulating its responses to major future challenges such as the minimization of and adaptation to climate changes, and from the point of view of guaranteeing societal goods and benefits (Roberts et al, 2017; Pantzar et al, 2018).Different designations like “marine reserve,” “no-take zone” or “fish box” have mostly been considered important tools in the management and protection of fishery resources (PérezRuzafa et al, 2017)
There is a broader concept, that of Marine Protected Area (MPA), which includes a greater number of objectives and regulations despite in many cases offering a lower degree of protection (Roberts and Hawkins, 2000; Gell and Roberts, 2003a; Costello and Ballantine, 2015)
In this review we refer to MPAs in this broad meaning, on some occasions we will refer to marine reserves when the original bibliographic data does so
Summary
Conservation of the marine environment–its physical and ecological functioning and its biodiversity–is of utmost importance for maintaining global natural processes of the planet, regulating its responses to major future challenges such as the minimization of and adaptation to climate changes, and from the point of view of guaranteeing societal goods and benefits (Roberts et al, 2017; Pantzar et al, 2018).Different designations like “marine reserve,” “no-take zone” or “fish box” have mostly been considered important tools in the management and protection of fishery resources (PérezRuzafa et al, 2017). Following Reuchlin-Hugenholtz and McKenzie (2015), an MPA is a “marine space designated and effectively managed to protect marine ecosystems, processes, habitats, and species, which can contribute to the restoration and replenishment of resources for social, economic, and cultural enrichment.”. This term could encompass many other concepts that are used in a similar sense, sometimes involving a greater or lesser degree of restrictions, such as the aforementioned marine reserve, fully protected marine area, no-take zone, fish box or fishery closure area, marine sanctuary, ocean sanctuary, marine park or locally managed marine area, and could include Special Areas of Conservation or Sites of Special Scientific Interest. In this review we refer to MPAs in this broad meaning, on some occasions we will refer to marine reserves when the original bibliographic data does so
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