Project: Enhancing MPAs’ role in restoring biodiversity while maintaining access to ecosystem services

Acronym	MPA4sustainability (Reference Number: BiodivRestore-424)
Duration	14/03/2022 - 31/03/2025
Project Topic	Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will play a crucial role in the successful implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy and the European Green Deal. They are locations where we can concentrate efforts to restore biodiversity and support the diversification of the blue economy to boost the sustainable use of marine resources. We have paid a lot of attention to the best ways to design and establish MPAs; yet with more than 17,000 MPAs now designated globally, less than a quarter have a clear management plan. Managing complex socioecological systems (SES) is harder and navigating them towards sustainability is even harder. That is particularly the case for MPAs for which biodiversity targets and the exploitation of regional ecosystem services have to be balanced. This project aims to find practical solutions to guide MPA managers in the best approaches to yield positive biodiversity outcomes while maintaining the ability of neighbouring communities to benefit from marine ecosystem services sustainably. Managers of MPAs in Madeira, France, Denmark and Sweden will together with scientists co-create the insights needed to develop this guide, based on a global synthesis of MPA data and detailed functional analyses at three case study sites. We will use data science and statistical modelling to determine the structure of interactions between biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in all current MPAs depending on their SES characteristics. We will then extend recent advances in theoretical ecological modelling to these socio-ecological networked systems to understand how management actions can tip MPA SES towards favorable states using three MPA case studies to benchmark models. With this insight, we will determine the characteristics that will yield desirable SES states. Monitoring is crucial to guide adaptive management plans along this MPA restoration journey. We will determine whether readily available biodiversity and ES indicators can be integrated with rapid sampling to develop a standardized ‘citizen monitoring’ approach that can provide the necessary and sufficient level of information needed to manage the transformative change at MPAs. Finally, we will tackle the policy interaction hurdles managers face when developing plans in regions where multiple MPAs have been designated with varied policy targets. We will determine how best to manage these MPA networks to add value for regional biodiversity and ES targets. This project will produce a decision support system for MPA managers, which we will make available in a user-friendly format complementing current international MPA guidelines to help increase the uptake of management plans for existing MPA networks. In addition, it will produce tangible advice on integrative governance for our practitioners that will meet current urgent needs for the three case study regions.
Website	visit project website
Network	BiodivRestore
Call	BiodivRestore Transnational Cofund Call 2020-2021

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Technical University of Denmark	Coordinator	Denmark
2	Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/University of Perpignan/ École Pratique des Hautes Etudes	Partner	France
3	Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences	Partner	Sweden
4	Madeira Whale Museum -Municipality of Machico	Partner	Portugal
5	Spanish National Research Council CSIC	Partner	Spain
6	Centre de Recerca Matemàtica	Partner	Spain