Stakeholder Engagement

How plans are developed or updated is as important to success as what’s in the plan. Engaging rights holders, stakeholders, women, and other marginalized groups in developing plan contents and MPA design ensures that the site design and management reflect local rights, values, and needs fairly and equitably.

Meaningful stakeholder engagement also ensures that local values and desired benefits of the site are reflected in the plan. This helps build trust and support for the site and management actions, which are crucial for management and compliance. Balancing ecological needs for conservation with socio-economic needs for local livelihoods and other values is challenging. Genuine community/stakeholder engagement takes time and good communication skills. Planning processes designed to listen to stakeholders can:

• Highlight conflicting interests that need to be navigated and resolved.

• Address expectations of what a site can and cannot achieve, ensuring that rights holders and stakeholders understand their limits and alleviating future disappointment or anger.

Even if rights holders and stakeholders were not engaged effectively in the planning of an MPA, it is essential to engage them as soon as possible. Management plan updates provide an ideal time to involve stakeholders, even if they were not engaged during the initial establishment and planning. This can be a first step toward building a relationship of trust moving forward.

For more insights, see Community Involvement in MPAs.

The inclusion of women is often overlooked during MPA planning and management. Yet, women are often directly and indirectly impacted by management decisions and can influence MPA compliance and support (and therefore effectiveness). Including women in planning and management is critical for effectiveness. The inclusion of women and other marginalized groups may require an assessment of local power structures to ensure they can participate in planning. Gender equity is a core component of conservation and is also an important part of global biodiversity, climate, and sustainability commitments and targets.

Engagement, Outreach, and Strategic Communication with Stakeholders

Communication and engagement with key stakeholders help maintain or strengthen relationships that support protecting marine ecosystems and resources as well as compliance with site rules. While enforcement addresses violations during or after they occur, strategic communication and engagement focus on preventing violations before they occur and are therefore critical for building and maintaining compliance with site rules and regulations. Strategic communications can include providing updates on management activities and progress or monitoring and research findings to targeted audiences.

Where possible, engage stakeholders to seek input on emerging issues or directly involve them in management and monitoring activities to empower them as stewards. Stakeholders who are unaware of site rules or feel left out of decision-making are more likely to violate rules. Relationships built through engagement will help managers share reasons for certain decisions and track stakeholder perspectives to identify when changes might be needed to maintain support and compliance.

For successful case studies, see Partnerships in MPAs.

Conflict Resolution

Engaging stakeholders in planning and throughout the management cycle requires managing conflicts. Different stakeholders have different interests and needs which can conflict with each other and/or management interests. For example, fishers may feel it’s unfair to prohibit fishing in a site while tourism is allowed, especially if they feel tourism can damage the marine environment (e.g., through anchor damage or overuse). If left unaddressed, conflicts can grow and undermine site planning and management.

Conflict resolution can:

• Provide an opportunity to find creative and collaborative solutions.

• Be tailored to local contexts and types of conflict.

• Require external professional support to mediate or negotiate between conflicting groups or use traditional protocols to overcome conflict.

Defining methods and processes for how conflict will be resolved before engaging stakeholders can help address conflicts as they arise and before they escalate.