A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

132 MARINE AND COASTAL
PROTECTED AREAS
this state of affairs is not sustainable. By definition, the designation of an area as an
MPA will restrict activities, which will ultimately call for some degree of enforcement
and such measures are impossible in the absence of a legal text that recognizes the
authority vested in the managers of the MPA.
Any authority in charge of establishing, and maintaining, an MPA will need to
achieve the following:
1. Define institutional responsibilities and relations
2. Establish priorities and mechanisms for selecting, establishing, and developing
marine protected areas
3. Protect species and their critical habitats adequately
4. Conserve threatened, rare, endemic, and commercial marine species and threatened,
unique, representative, and valuable marine habitats
5. Ensure permanent protection
6. Provide mechanisms for developing management plans for each protected area,
based on scientific data
7. Enable the control of developments and activities outside the protected area that
may adversely affect it
8. Regulate exploitation in protected areas and their adjacent buffer zones
9. Provide enforcement mechanisms
10. Restore damaged ecosystems
Attaining these objectives will provide a sound foundation for a protected areas
programme. The law then becomes the instrument through which these objectives
can be recognized, explained and respected (and to some extent, funded). This does
not necessarily mean that the absence of new legislation should preclude the
establishment of the MPA. In fact, in some cases where the need to act is pressing,
it might be more appropriate to designate the area as protected, even if the enforcement
of the protective measures is deferred until the appropriate law is passed. One of the
first steps to be taken is to carry out an assessment of the laws that are already in
place, and which may be adapted to incorporate the MPA elements. For instance,
legislation for an MPA set up to protect important fisheries resources may well be
incorporated within an existing fisheries law. Likewise, if the MPA is set up to preserve
an area for tourism development, it could well be part of a broader tourism development
law. The legal diagnosis stage will give an indication of the legal system in place and
may suggest the appropriate approach to take when drafting new, MPA-specific, law.
An important consideration in that regard is the legal and political state of the
country in which the MPA is to be set up.