EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Understanding the cost of establishing marine protected areas

Ashley McCrea-Strub, Dirk Zeller, Ussif Sumaila, Jay Nelson, Andrew Balmford and Daniel Pauly

Marine Policy, 2011, vol. 35, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: While the recurrent cost of managing marine protected areas (MPAs) has been documented and estimated, there has been virtually no attempt to quantify the cost of establishing MPAs in the first place. This lack of attention is likely the result of the complexity of the process, involving often uncoordinated efforts of a multitude of governmental and non-governmental entities over a protracted period of time with no clear start and end-point. Using information gathered from a representative subset of MPAs worldwide, this paper presents the first attempt to identify and describe the various components, and explore potential predictors of the total funds spent in the course of establishment. The thirteen MPAs studied vary in size (from 360,000 km2), location (including near- and offshore in both developed and developing countries), objectives and degree of protection. Variation in MPA start-up costs is shown to be most significantly related to both MPA size and the duration of the establishment phase. Development of a method to estimate the potential cost of establishing proposed MPAs should play a crucial role in the conservation planning process.

Keywords: Marine; protected; area; (MPA); Reserve; Cost; Establishment; Conservation; Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308-597X(10)00133-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:1-9

Access Statistics for this article

Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown

More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:1-9