A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

Introduction
People will continue to need fishes from reefs, wood and fodder from mangroves,
access to beaches and seas for recreation, land for seaside housing, and seas for waste
disposal. Conservation aims to satisfy these immediate needs in a way that ensures
maintenance of the resources in the long term. MPAs help channel development to
avoid sacrificing one resource by harvesting another or by modifying habitats or
polluting the sea. As temporary custodians of the world’s resources we are privileged
to use them. We are not justified in using them carelessly—we are obliged to maintain
them and pass them on undepleted to later generations.
Premises
Of the major ecological premises underlying this book, the most important is
recognizing the intrinsic linkage between marine, coastal, and terrestrial realms,
which precludes the effective management of a marine area independent of managing
adjacent land habitats. That coastal ecosystems include both land and water components
and that they should be managed together is considered fundamental. In fact, much
discussion here concerns protecting landforms that border the sea, such as beaches,
dunes, barrier islands, and small oceanic
FIGURE 1.
and coral islands. Also emphasized are
situations where coastal or marine
protected areas would be degraded
without attention to inland areas, such
as the watersheds and coastal rivers
that must be managed to maintain the
water balances of protected estuaries
(Figure 1). In short, the ecological linkage
of land and sea is a major consideration
in formulating strategies for
marine protected areas. The implication
of the linkage for management, or
connectivity, is that conserving coastal
and marine resources requires extending
management to shorelands and even
inland areas.
Another important premise is
that ocean currents, wind drifts, and
animal migrations link distant regions
of the ocean. For example, wind transports
industrial pollutants that may be
observed elsewhere as acid rain. These
agents also transport nutrients, food,
seeds, larvae, organisms, and pollutants
A river discharges runoff water, nutrients and sediments—
all damaging to coral reefs—into the ocean near Cairns in
Queensland, Australia. The ecological linkage of land and
sea is a major consideration in the management of the
Great Barrier Reef lying just offshore.
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Photo by Erkki Siirila.