Beyond traditional stakeholder engagement: Public participation roles in California's statewide marine protected area planning process (original) (raw)
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Ocean & Coastal Management, 2013
The California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative (Initiative) was a public-private partnership focused on designing a statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs) to increase coherence and effectiveness in protecting the state's marine life, habitats, and ecosystems through a public planning process. In pursuing this core charge, the Initiative had to consider a range of other (non-MPA) policy issues and develop approaches to ensure that MPA network planning continued unimpeded, while also facilitating the consideration of issues deemed outside of California's MPA planning process. This paper explores the strategies used to address policy issues that arose in MPA planning and provides examples from six specific topic areas: fisheries management, water quality, military use areas, marine bird and mammal protection, dredging and maintenance, and tribal gathering activities. Each of these topics helps illustrate a different strategy utilized, including engaging policy issues early, providing additional evaluations, engaging additional support, putting complimentary issues on a parallel track, utilizing flexibility in statutes, and ensuring frequent and direct stakeholder communication. Considering how multiple issues were addressed in a MPA planning process provides important insights for more integrated coastal and marine spatial planning.
Enhancing the Legacy of California's Marine Protected Areas through Bottom-Up Collaboration
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California enacted the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999 to create a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the California coast. Through an eight-year process that engaged stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers, 124 MPAs were designated. During implementation, a network of county level collaboratives was formed to ensure that MPA management continued the bottom-up engagement of a diverse set of stakeholders. These collaboratives, and the Collaborative Network that supports them, have been an integral part of MPA management ever since 2012. The Collaborative Network is an ongoing experiment in collaborative governance and has been recognized as a key element in management of the MPAs. Our project analyzes the fourteen collaboratives, the Collaborative Network, and the relationships between the collaboratives, the Collaborative Network, and the State in an attempt to delineate the benefits and challenges of this arrangement, and identify best practices of collaborative g...
Coastal Management
The aim was very clear: protect the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef whilst minimising adverse impacts on users. The rezoning the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (the Marine Park) was the biggest planning exercise ever undertaken by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and one of the largest undertaken in the world for marine conservation. It primarily involved engaging people and communities adjacent to the Marine Park, but included comments from all over Australia and the world. The GBRMPA received over 31 500 submissions, the largest for any environmental planning process in Australia. Over 600 meetings in at least 90 locations were held with thousands of people. Information used by the GBRMPA for the rezoning included written submissions, databases, maps, field notes, and the experience and knowledge of GBRMPA staff, users and other interested individuals. Despite the careful preparation and planning that accompanied a project of this size, some communication messages became confused, deliberately twisted or failed to get through. Consequently, some communities heard distorted and unclear messages about the project and the process. So, what were the barriers that prevented information from becoming disseminated correctly and accepted? One barrier was some communities' reluctance to accept zoning as the preferred management tool; another was the lack of awareness about the complexity of the problem; many believing that this was only about managing fishing. Other barriers were a lack in understanding of the solution and a lack of trust in government agencies. For each of these barriers, strategies were developed and success was achieved for many issues, more so in some areas. This article discusses these communication barriers, how we largely overcame them and some lessons learnt from one of the largest environmental public participation programs in Australia's history.
Ocean & Coastal Management, 2010
The planning process for California's Marine Life Protection Act in north central California represents a case study in the design of a regional component of a statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs) for improved ecosystem protection. We describe enabling factors, such as a legislative mandate, political will, and adequate capacity and funding that fostered a successful planning process. We identify strategic principles that guided the design of a transparent public planning process that delivered regional MPA network proposals, which both met science guidelines and achieved a high level of support among stakeholders. We also describe key decision support elements (spatial data, planning tools, and scientific evaluation) that were essential for designing, evaluating, and refining alternative MPA network proposals and for informing decision-makers.
Ocean & Coastal Management, 2013
Marine protected area (MPA) network planning in California was conducted over the course of nearly seven years through implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). State agency and contract staff collaborated through a publiceprivate partnership called the MLPA Initiative (Initiative), supporting regional groups of stakeholders in crafting MPA network proposals for consideration by the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) and ultimately the California Fish and Game Commission. To design a statewide network, the Initiative divided California's 1770 km coastline into five "study regions" for sequential planning, each with a separate "regional stakeholder group" (RSG) consisting of fishermen, conservationists, recreational users, and others with intimate knowledge of the area, who were tasked with proposing alternative MPA network designs. Each study region presented a different set of factors that needed to be considered by Initiative staff in designing the overall stakeholder planning process. Furthermore, as planning for each study region was completed, a formal "lessons learned" evaluation was conducted that informed process design in subsequent study regions. Thus, designing a statewide MPA network through regional MPA planning processes presented the opportunity and challenge of adapting the stakeholder process design to both regional differences and lessons learned over time. This paper examines how differences in regional characteristics and lessons learned influenced three important elements of the stakeholder process, including convening the stakeholders, managing stakeholder engagement, and integrating input from managing state agencies. The fundamental structure and unique management characteristics of the Initiative were essential in facilitating adaptation of these process elements over time. The California MLPA Initiative provides a case study in process flexibility to address changing contexts and a model for similar coastal and marine spatial planning processes.
Ocean & Coastal Management, 2013
California enacted the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) in 1999 to redesign and improve the state's system of marine protected areas (MPAs), which the State Legislature found created the illusion of protection while falling far short of its potential to protect and conserve living marine life and habitat. In 2004, after two unsuccessful attempts to implement the MLPA, California created the MLPA Initiative through a memorandum of understanding among two state agencies and a privately-funded foundation that established objectives for a planning process, set out a timeline for deliverables, and established roles and responsibilities for key bodies.
Ocean & Coastal Management, 2013
Without the proper enabling conditions, MPA planning processes can be significantly hindered in their capacity to achieve stated goals. In California, after two unsuccessful attempts, statewide planning of a network of marine protected areas (MPA) was achieved through the California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. Six initial enabling conditions contributed to moving the MLPA Initiative forward, ultimately meeting the statutory objective of redesigning the statewide system of MPAs. Those conditions included: (1) a strong legal mandate which provided guidance and flexibility; (2) political support and leadership which enabled the process to overcome political challenges and opposition; (3) adequate funding which ensured sufficient staff support and facilitated innovative approaches to a public MPA network planning process; (4) an aggressive timeline with firm deadlines which propelled the process forward; (5) willingness of civil society to engage which provided for better informed and broadly supported outcomes; and (6) an effective and transparent process design which optimized contributions from stakeholders, scientists, and policy makers. These conditions enabled the MLPA Initiative to avoid shortcomings of similar planning processes, with implications for broader national policy on coastal and marine spatial planning in the United States.
Coming to the table: Early stakeholder engagement in marine spatial planning
Marine Policy, 2012
From 2009 to 2011, marine spatial planning (MSP) rapidly gained visibility in the United States as a promising ocean management tool. A few small-scale planning efforts were completed in state waters, and the Obama Administration proposed a framework for large-scale regional MSP throughout the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. During that same time period, the authors engaged a variety of U.S ocean stakeholders in a series of dialogs with several goals: to share information about what MSP is or could be, to hear stakeholder views and concerns about MSP, and to foster better understanding between those who depend on ocean resources for their livelihood and ocean conservation advocates. The stakeholder meetings were supplemented with several rounds of in-depth interviews and a survey. Despite some predictable areas of conflict, project participants agreed on a number of issues related to stakeholder engagement in MSP: all felt strongly that government planners need to engage outsiders earlier, more often, more meaningfully, and through an open and transparent process. Equally important, the project affirmed the value of bringing unlike parties together at the earliest opportunity to learn, talk, and listen to others with whom they rarely engage.
2. Citizen information and participation in public choices for coastal management Citizen participation and search for appropriate tools for citizens' involvement in policy making is an important topic in recent scientific debate. Hanna (2000) sheds light on the issue of information and public participation as essential elements of integrated planning and public policy. Integrated planning implies the coexistence of social, economic and environmental concerns in decision-making. Integration is particularly difficult in coastal areas where the challenges to be faced in terms of contrasting uses are particularly difficult because of multiple jurisdictions, multiple users, and presence of scarce and fragile resources (Kearney et al., 2007). Integrated planning also implies the interaction of policy makers with stakeholders and consideration of their claims in the final decisions. Hanna (2000) points out that integrated planning can be comprehensive (the decision-making process can include and make a synthesis among the various requests of the different players involved), but also strategic, that means not to be the synthesis of the different instances but contemplate, however, a collaboration and communication among decision-makers. We could define the former as a "strong" integrated planning and the second as a "soft" integrated planning. In the first case the element of participation prevails, while in the second that of information does; in both cases, a bottom-up process is accompanied by a top-down one. The first problem that arises, then, is to correctly identify the individuals-or groups of individuals-who should be involved in the informativeparticipatory processes. In an ideal world, all those whose lives may be affected by the decisions under discussion should be involved (Kearney et al., 2007): this would be perfect democracy. But, how to do it in the real world? The second problem is that the way the information is collected and disseminated and the way stakeholders are invited to participate, is not neutral: they, indeed, respond to the system of values of those who put them in place (Hanna, 2000). But, how to reach neutrality in the practice? This poses a third problem concerning the relations of power among the players involved in participatory processes (Rockloff and Lockie, 2006). Doody (2003) stresses the crucial role of information and participation in the processes of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). He considers information as a prerequisite for any decision-making process, and gathering information as a way to encourage and favour public participation. Doody (2003) considers awareness raising as the only way to build consensus and to reach a coastal management that would be truly integrated. He highlights the importance of citizens' involvement from the early stages of the process, as this is vital to create confidence and trust. Geskou (2003) considers participation as one of the three elements characterizing the public