This review examines the social, economic, and political effects of environmental conservation projects as they are manifested in protected areas. We pay special attention to people living in and displaced from protected areas, analyze the worldwide growth of protected areas over the past 20 years, and offer suggestions for future research trajectories in anthropology. We examine protected areas as a way of seeing, understanding, and producing nature (environment) and culture (society) and as a way of attempting to manage and control the relationship between the two. We focus on social, economic, scientific, and political changes in places where there are protected areas and in the urban centers that control these areas. We also examine violence, conflict, power relations, and governmentality as they are connected to the processes of protection. Finally, we examine discourse and its effects and argue that anthropology needs to move beyond the current examinations of language and power to attend to the ways in which protected areas produce space, place, and peoples.

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Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas

Principles for designing marine protected area (MPA) networks that address social, economic, and biological criteria are well established in the scientific literature. Climate change represents a new and serious threat to marine ecosystems, but, to date, few studies have specifically considered how to design MPA networks to be resilient to this emerging threat. Here, we compile the best available information on MPA network design and supplement it with specific recommendations for building resilience into these networks. We provide guidance on size, spacing, shape, risk spreading (representation and replication), critical areas, connectivity, and maintaining ecosystem function to help MPA planners and managers design MPA networks that are more robust in the face of climate-change impacts.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/27809090

Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change

The relationships between fish assemblages, their associated habitat, and degree of protection from fishing were evaluated over a broad spatial scale throughout the main Hawaiian islands. Most fish assemblage characteristics showed positive responses to protection whether it was physical (e.g. habitat complexity), biological (e.g. coral cover growth forms), or human-induced (e.g. marine reserves). Fish biomass was lowest in areas of direct wave exposure and highest in areas partially sheltered from swells. Higher values for fish species richness, number of individuals, biomass, and diversity were observed in locations with higher substrate complexity. Areas completely protected from fishing had distinct fish assemblages with higher standing stock and diversity than areas where fishing was permitted or areas that were partially protected from fishing. Locations influenced by customary stewardship harbored fish biomass that was equal to or greater than that of no-take protected areas. Marine protected areas in the main Hawaiian islands with high habitat complexity, moderate wave disturbance, a high percentage of branching and/or lobate coral coupled with legal protection from fishing pressure had higher values for most fish assemblage characteristics.

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Effects of habitat, wave exposure, and marine protected area status on coral reef fish assemblages in the Hawaiian archipelago

http://www.pelagicos.net/MARS6910_spring2012/readings/Guidetti_et_al_2008.pdf

Italian marine reserve effectiveness: Does enforcement matter?

Drawing on our experience in establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons, New Georgia, Solomon Islands, this paper shows how a geographical information system (GIS) database can be used to incorporate sociospatial information, such as indigenous knowledge and artisanal fishing data, along with biophysical and other information to assist in MPA design. We argue that converting peoples’ knowledge and socioecological behavior into geo-spatial data allows researchers to formulate hypotheses regarding human responses to inter- and intra-habitat variability, along with other marine ecological processes, and help in the designing and implementation of resource management strategies in a cost-effective and participatory way, bridging the gap between indigenous and Western cognitions of seascapes. More generally, we show the significance of combining spatial tools, anthropological fieldwork, and social and natural science methods for studying artisanal fisheries with the goal of aiding the design of marine protected areas.

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Incorporating Fishermen' s Local Knowledge and Behavior into geographical information Systems (giS) for Designing marine Protected areas in Oceania

: Ecologists have paid increasing attention to the design of marine protected areas (MPAs), and their design advice consistently recommends representing all habitat types within MPAs or MPA networks as a means to provide protection to all parts of the natural ocean system. Recent developments of new habitat-mapping techniques make this advice more achievable, but the success of such an approach depends largely on our ability to define habitat types in a way that is ecologically relevant. We devised and tested the ecological relevance of a set of habitat-type definitions through our participation in a stakeholder-driven process to design a network of MPAs, focusing on no-take marine reserves in the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, San Andres Archipelago, Colombia. A priori definitions of habitat types were ecologically relevant, in that our habitat-type definitions corresponded to identifiable and unique characteristics in the ecological communities found there. The identification of ecological pathways and connectivity among habitats also helped in designing ecologically relevant reserve boundaries. Our findings contributed to the overall design process, along with our summary of other general principles of marine reserve design. Extensive stakeholder input provided information concerning the resources and their patterns of use. These inputs also contributed to the reserve design process. We anticipate success for the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve at achieving conservation and social goals because its zoning process includes detailed yet flexible scientific advice and the participation of stakeholders at every step.




Resumen: Los ecologos han puesto mayor atencion en el diseno de areas marinas protegidas (AMP), y sus sugerencias de diseno recomiendan consistentemente la representacion de todos los tipos de habitat en los AMP o en las redes de AMP como una forma de proporcionar proteccion a todas las partes del sistema oceanico natural. Desarrollos recientes de tecnicas de mapeo de habitat nuevas hacen que estas recomendaciones sean mas realizables, pero el exito de esta metodologia depende, en buena medida, de nuestra capacidad de definir tipos de habitat de manera ecologicamente relevante. Participando en un proceso conducido por grupos de interes para disenar una red de AMPs, concentrada en reservas marinas sin extraccion en la Reserva de la Biosfera Seaflower, Archipelago San Andres, Colombia, disenamos y probamos la relevancia ecologica de un conjunto de definiciones de tipos de habitat. Las definiciones a priori de tipos de habitat fueron ecologicamente relevantes porque nuestras definiciones de tipos de habitat correspondieron a caracteristicas unicas e identificables de las comunidades ecologicas encontradas ahi. La identificacion de trayectorias ecologicas y la conectividad entre habitats tambien ayudaron al diseno de limites de reserva ecologicamente relevantes. Nuestros hallazgos contribuyeron al proceso de diseno en su conjunto, junto con nuestra recopilacion de otros principios generales para el diseno de reservas marinas. La participacion de los grupos de interes proporciono informacion concerniente a los recursos y sus patrones de uso. Esta participacion tambien contribuyo al proceso de diseno de la reserva. Anticipamos el exito para la Reserva de la Biosfera Seaflower en el cumplimiento de sus metas sociales y de conservacion porque en su proceso de zonificacion se incluyen recomendaciones cientificas detalladas pero flexibles y la participacion de grupos de interes en cada etapa.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/3588923

Designing Effective Marine Protected Areas in Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, Colombia, Based on Biological and Sociological Information

On the insular platform of Old Providence/Santa Catalina, Colombia, we compared nearshore lagoonal patch reefs to those on the northern bank distant from the islands to determine the importance of habitat connectivity to fish community structure. Nearshore patch reefs had greater proximity to mangrove, seagrass and rocky shore habitats, and they had significantly more individuals. Nearshore reefs also tended to have a greater total biomass, more species, a higher proportion of predators of mobile invertebrates and small fishes, and a lower proportion of herbivores. Biomass of snappers and grunts at nearshore sites was four times greater compared to bank sites, and was correlated with the amount of seagrass and sand/rubble habitat within 500 m of each patch reef. We also compared length-frequency distributions and abundances of grunts and snappers among all sites (deep and shallow forereefs, patch reefs and deep and shallow leeside slopes). The results were consistent with ontogenetic migrations from shallow sites, primarily seagrass and mangrove habitats, to deeper sites and to those further out on the bank. The evidence suggests that species differed in both distance and direction of dispersal, which may be affected by the abundance and distribution of preferred habitats. Marine reserves near the islands should target nearshore nursery areas and patch reefs harboring species of limited dispersal capability. Reserves on the northern bank would protect spawners of those species showing the greatest dispersal capability. Gulf and Caribbean Research Vol 14(2), 61–77, 2003 Manuscript received January 22, 2002; accepted September 23, 2002

/pdf/habitat-connectivity-in-reef-fish-communities-and-marine-24sr0sua9m.pdf

A. Mitchell-Chui

Papers

Designing Effective Marine Protected Areas in Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, Colombia, Based on Biological and Sociological Information

Habitat Connectivity in Reef Fish Communities and Marine Reserve Design in Old Providence- Santa Catalina, Colombia