Tracking the debate around marine protected areas: key issues and the BEG framework

Area of Science:

• Marine Conservation Science
• Environmental Management
• Conservation Policy

Background:

• Marine conservation efforts often face criticism for fragmented, mono-disciplinary approaches.
• A need exists to assess the breadth of scientific research in marine environment management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an analytical framework to evaluate the foci of policy documents and scientific work on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
• To assess the extent to which MPA research addresses biological-ecological [B], economic-social [E], and governance-management [G] domains.

Main Methods:

• Development of an analytical [BEG] framework.
• Testing the framework on selected cohorts of journal articles on MPAs.

Main Results:

• Marine Protected Area research is predominantly focused on biological-ecological aspects [B].
• There is a growing frequency of governance/management terminology in MPA literature over the last 15 years.
• The economic-social domain [E] is underrepresented in MPA literature compared to biological and governance concerns.

Conclusions:

• The analytical [BEG] framework effectively gauges research foci in MPAs.
• MPA research shows a trend towards integrating governance concerns, but economic-social aspects require greater attention.
• A more integrated, multi-disciplinary approach is needed for effective marine conservation and MPA management.