Large-scale conservation planning in a multinational marine environment: cost matters

Area of Science:

• Marine Conservation Planning
• Conservation Economics
• Spatial Prioritization

Background:

• Marine conservation planning often overlooks economic costs, focusing solely on biodiversity and threats.
• Large-scale Marine Protected Area (MPA) network planning across countries presents unique challenges.
• Integrating cost is crucial for achieving feasible and efficient conservation outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and test an approach for incorporating economic costs into large-scale MPA network planning.
• To explore cost surrogates for marine conservation in the Mediterranean Sea.
• To assess the influence of cost on spatial priorities for conserving threatened marine species.

Main Methods:

• Developed cost surrogates based on revenue from commercial fishing, noncommercial fishing, and aquaculture.
• Utilized Marxan software to set conservation targets for 77 threatened Mediterranean species (10% distribution).
• Compared nine opportunity cost scenarios and spatial priorities against cost-agnostic schemes.

Main Results:

• Conservation targets were met for <10% of the Mediterranean area with <1% opportunity cost.
• Area is an ineffective cost surrogate; multi-sectoral surrogates are superior.
• Incorporating economic costs significantly altered spatial priorities for species conservation.

Conclusions:

• Economic cost integration is essential for effective and efficient marine conservation planning.
• Multi-sectoral cost surrogates provide more robust planning than area-based metrics.
• Systematic, cost-inclusive planning is critical for multinational conservation efforts, especially amid financial constraints.