A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

136 MARINE AND COASTAL
PROTECTED AREAS
the provisions of the Marine Parks Act oversees and approves the activities of a
management unit (attached to the Fisheries Division) concerning the establishment
and management of marine protected areas. The Board comprises members from
government, private sector, NGO and scientific communities (see Box I-5).
Inexperience is a problem for any land-oriented agency whose responsibilities
are extended to include coastal or marine protected areas (Gardner, 1982a, b). Such
an agency must seek advice and information and must be open to new management
approaches.
Newly formed governments and those just beginning marine conservation
programmes will have the least management experience and scientific data, and are
unlikely to have appropriate institutional frameworks for coastal and marine
conservation. Laws and administrative arrangements handed down from colonial
governments may not be suitable, especially in respect of traditional law and comanagement.
Young governments may be too concerned with other administrative
and development activities to afford more than a low priority to conservation. At such
times governments are most vulnerable to pressures for short-term schemes and
quick solutions—factors that do not foster successful conservation programmes.
A potential solution in these instances is management of protected areas
through partnership with communities, the private sector or NGOs to share the
management responsibility and related financial and human resources burden. For
example, NGOs have effectively managed the Cousin Island Reserve in Seychelles and
the Soufriere Marine Management Area in St. Lucia. Also, the Chumbe Island Coral
Park off Zanzibar is run by a private business enterprise. In these cases (see Part III,
Cases 6, 7 and 11), government has allocated responsibility for management, including
employment of personnel, revenue collection and distribution, conservation
interventions, and enforcement activities to its NGO partner.
Administrations that have little experience in the establishment of MPAs have
the opportunity to learn from the experience of other countries, and to avoid their
mistakes. In this way they can begin with a more efficient and comprehensive system
for coastal and marine conservation, one integrating both land and sea.
Further complications arise in national systems where resources seaward of the
low water mark, or a boundary a few more miles seaward, are owned by the central
government, while resources on the landward side are state or province controlled
(as in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Malaysia). Such jurisdictional divisions
hamper the establishment of protected areas spanning the land-sea interface. A
potential solution to this situation is a Coastal Zone Management programme (see
Section I-5.7)
It may be desirable to have state (provincial) or regional agencies to collaborate
with national government in the implementation of conservation policies. States