Description
Abstract
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are effective tools for preserving marine organisms and ecosystems against the background of climate change and intense human activities. Community participation is a helpful management approach for marine protected areas and has received substantial attention from researchers worldwide. Studies have concentrated on community-based marine resource management, the participation mode of communities, and participatory planning and monitoring. In addition, we summarized the experience and lessons of community participation to illustrate the role of community involvement in constructing and managing marine protected areas. Finally, the outlook for future research was presented based on the analysis above. We recommend promoting cross-disciplinary cooperation and combining quantitative and qualitative methods to support this research. Meanwhile, it is critical to further study the specific path of community participation and fully utilize local knowledge to supplement scientific data. The current study provided an overview of publication characteristics, research trends, and primary research methods in studies of community participation in marine protected areas (MPAs). The results will help to find ways to mitigate conflicts between Marine protected areas and communities. We hope that our study promotes their coordinated and sustainable development and contributes to marine biodiversity conservation and human well-being.
1.0 Introduction
Community-driven marine conservation is an approach that involves local communities in managing, protecting, and conserving marine ecosystems. This method has shown considerable promise as a conservation strategy due to its focus on local knowledge, community empowerment, and sustainable management practices.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the need to protect degraded marine environments. Marine conservation should be achieved through integrated marine management and rational resource utilization. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are effective tools for protecting marine ecosystems and promoting the rational use of marine resources. They perform the function of marine ecological protection as well as providing various services for the survival and well-being of coastal people (Harker et al., 2022). Meanwhile, human behavior also affects the management effects of Marine protected areas (MPAs) (Harker et al., 2022). Scholars believe that human factors are the key to sustainably developing the marine environment. Most of the human factors affecting the conservation effectiveness of Marine protected areas (MPAs) originate from surrounding communities. Marine protected areas (MPAs) and their surrounding communities are complementary and indispensable to each other and, therefore, are often regarded as a coupled social–ecological system to be studied (Abdurrahim et al., 2022).
However, building and managing Marine protected areas can also lead to conflicts with residents. For example, marine ecology is usually restored by closing fishing grounds or controlling catches in Marine protected areas (MPAs), exacerbating problems between Marine protected areas (MPAs) and communities in terms of resource use (Abdurrahim et al., 2022) as seen in Soufrière Marine Management Area (SMMA) in St. Lucia. Soufriere is a picturesque rural town, located on the southwest coast of the island of St. Lucia. This area is remarkable for the richness and diversity of its landscapes and natural resources, including mountains, rainforest, rivers, active volcanism and coral reefs.
In recent decades, community participation (also known as “community involvement”) has become an important part of environmental decision-making processes. It is defined as “the involvement of those affected by a decision in the decision making process” (Abdurrahim et al., 2022).
Effective community participation can mitigate conflicts and enhance MPA management. It provides a chance to solve biodiversity problems and partially mitigate cultural, economic, and political issues. The international community recognizes the central role of Indigenous people and local communities in conserving biodiversity-rich ecosystems. Community participation can also improve the resilience of MPAs to global climate change, and it plays a significant role in marine environment protection work (Boncheva et al., 2022).
When communities are directly involved, there is often a higher rate of compliance with conservation regulations. Locals feel a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for the protected areas, which can reduce poaching and overfishing. Community enforcement tends to be more effective than external enforcement because local stakeholders are familiar with each other and understand the immediate impacts of rule-breaking.
Local communities possess traditional knowledge about their environment, including information on seasonal changes, migration patterns, and local biodiversity. Incorporating this knowledge into conservation planning helps create more tailored and context-sensitive strategies that often prove more sustainable and practical than top-down approaches (Boncheva et al., 2022).
Studies have shown that community participation in ecotourism has contributed to the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of MPAs. Secondly, the attitudes and current participation status of community residents, especially fishers, have been analyzed through literature analysis, as well as open and semi-structured interviews (Rahman et al., 2021). This type of research usually involves a case study of a specific MPA, using participatory field research methods to understand the community’s perceptions and attitudes. For example, Masud et al. used questionnaires to collect data and revealed the community’s view on co-management in st. Lucia MPAs. The results showed that the co-management framework helps local people sustainably utilize natural resources and achieve socio-economic development. Finally, researchers have explored specific methods of community involvement in MPA management. Means of participation include community-based marine spatial planning, community-based conservation, and participatory monitoring and assessment (Freitas et al., 2022).
Thus, this study provides a comprehensive review of international research on community participation in MPAs using the bibliometric method. The publication characteristics, research hotspots, and evolution of research themes are clarified, and the research methods are summarized. The lessons learned from community participation in MPAs are analyzed based on case studies. The results will help to identify the key research points and forecast future trends in the field of community participation in MPAs. This will also be conducive to optimizing participation paths for local people and searching for ways to alleviate conflicts. Eventually, we hope that our study will promote coordinated and sustainable development between MPAs and communities, and contribute to marine conservation and human well-being.
Materials and Methods
Source of Data
We used the Web of Science as a database. This database collects world-class academic journals and is widely used which can confidently support literature analyses in various research fields. Furthermore, its representativeness has been validated through previous bibliometric studies . To retrieve information from the literature spanning 1994 to 2022, we used the following terms individually: “marine protected area community-based”, “marine protected area community involvement”, and “marine protected area community participation”. A total of 470 documents were obtained as of December 2022. We then filtered the papers in two steps: During the initial screening, some reports, letters, and book reviews were excluded because these are usually considered less influential and persuasive than journal articles, review articles, and dissertation theses. In the second step of screening, we carefully read the abstracts of these articles, as well as some of their full texts, and papers not encompassing community participation in MPAs or community-based MPAs were excluded. Finally, articles, reviews, and proceedings were selected for analysis after eliminating documents that were not closely related to the research topic.
Data Analysis
Our main research method was bibliometric analysis, which can identify the external characteristics of the literature through statistical methods. Based on the basic information provided by the Web of Science database, the temporal and spatial distribution of the literature releases and the main characteristics of the publications were analyzed. To a certain extent, the temporal and spatial distribution of the literature can reflect the development level of research in a study field and the degree of importance attached to related issues in different regions (Cheung et al., 2022). Publication characteristics include major journals and their impact factors (IFs), research institutions, and subject categories. The IF usually measures the effectiveness of the journal, and those with high IFs contribute more to the research field’s development (Cheung et al., 2022). Analysis of research institutions shows the most productive universities or organizations, and the main research contents are illustrated by statistics of subject categories. Research hotspots and trends in the evolution of research topics were visualized with VOSviewer (version 1.6.17), a software tool with keyword clustering and co-occurrence functions (Cheung et al., 2022).
Results
Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Literature Releases
Before 2008, there were few relevant studies on community participation in MPAs, but the number of relevant studies has proliferated since 2009 for the study, with publications reaching their peak in 2021. In general, the number of papers related to community participation in MPAs showed a clear upward trend from 1994 to 2022 (Figure 1a), demonstrating that increasing attention has been paid to this field.
Figure 1. (a) Temporal and (b) spatial distribution of studies on community participation in MPAs from 1994 to 2022.
Ecological and Socio-Economic benefits of community participation in managing MPAs
Community participation in MPAs mainly focuses on protecting coral reef ecosystems. Ecosystem services provided by marine ecosystems connect stakeholders with MPAs and make them a social–ecological system (Turicchia et al., 2021). Coral reef ecosystems are a critical source of fish diversity and recreation. However, increasing anthropogenic activities have led to coral degradation. Participatory strategies, such as co-management and community involvement, offer opportunities to improve the management and sustainable use of coral reefs in MPAs (Turicchia et al., 2021). A comprehensive governance system that includes local customary tenure and community participation is critical to increasing the resilience of marine ecosystems (Turicchia et al., 2021).
Especially in the context of climate change, community participation in managing MPAs can effectively respond to changes in the external environment. Resource co-management through MPAs and locally managed marine areas can improve ecological conditions and enhance community adaptability (Turicchia et al., 2021). Combining ecosystem-based adaptation and community- based adaptation is the most appropriate pathway to meeting the challenges of climate change. It also involves the keywords “customary management”, “adaptive management”, and “decentralization”. Governments and administrative organizations share and delegate power to communities to achieve decentralization. Furthermore, communities providing positive social–ecological feedback to the government is also a participation pattern that benefits adaptive co-management. Community participation can provide a foundation of local management for large marine protected area networks (Peer et al., 2021).
Community- based marine resource management (CBMRM) is also a key component of community participation. Community-based no-take areas managed by Indigenous people and fishers are usually established in this fisheries management model. Community-based marine fishery resource management promotes biodiversity inside and, in some cases, outside MPAs (Peer et al., 2021).
Community participation should be conducted throughout the MPA construction process, including preliminary planning and later monitoring. A community-based priority-protected area map should be drawn through community interviews and meetings before establishing an MPA. Research shows that community residents and fishermen involved in early planning are likelier to participate in later monitoring and management. Indeed, as the main beneficiaries of resource management, local people are ideally qualified for monitoring and maintaining MPAs. It will not only reduce management costs but also raise community awareness of ecological conservation (Peer et al., 2021).
Theme evolution in the research field was analyzed by distributing keywords along a temporal gradient. At the beginning of the research phase, community participation mainly appeared in some Pacific Island countries, with studies concentrated on protecting fragile coral reef ecosystems. With expanding research content, scholars realized the importance of communities in managing MPAs and started to focus on the attitudes of local people. Adaptive management, the co-management of marine resources, and native perceptions became the research emphasis at this stage (Trimble et al., 2014).
Generally, communities play an essential role in natural resource management, and agreements between communities and management organizations should be respected and legalized. In Australia, the Representative Areas Program (RAP) played an essential role in participatory planning issues for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The cost of information collection can be reduced and the residents’ awareness of protection can be improved through participation in activities like holding community seminars before formulating draft zoning plans. Combining local knowledge with expert opinions is important to marine spatial planning. This can make community residents feel involved and reduce the cost of information collection. Therefore, effective public engagement can promote the implementation of marine spatial planning in MPAs. The case of Moheli Marine Park illustrates the importance of community participation in environmental monitoring for MPAs. Improving environmental education and utilizing local knowledge can alleviate gaps in scientific data and poor law enforcement in management departments. Lastly, the participatory approach was used in the management plan of the Right Whale Environmental Protection Area (MP-RWEPA). Local fishers provided suggestions during the plan’s development, and this advice was fully reflected in the final management actions and guidelines. This reduced social participation asymmetries in MPA management and strengthened the relationship between small-scale fishing communities and the RWEPA’s organizations and leaders (Trimble et al., 2021).
To sum up, community participation in early planning and later monitoring makes up for insufficient data and funds to a certain extent. In addition, the attitudes and perceptions of communities and a supportive policy environment are vital to achieving management goals in MPAs. Finally, the sense of identity and responsibility of local people can be increased through co-management and community empowerment, contributing to developing governance strategies and improving management effects.
The Effect of Community Participation in MPAs
The significance of community participation in MPAs is mainly reflected in two aspects, namely, benefits to community residents and MPA management.
Firstly, community participation in marine resource management can increase the sense of ownership, trust, and support for MPAs among residents. This alleviates conflicts between community residents and marine protected area construction projects in terms of marine resource usage. Protecting marine resources is one of the main purposes of establishing marine protected areas. However, establishing MPAs can prohibit or limit access to marine resources for residents, increasing the livelihood vulnerability of local communities. Community involvement in managing marine resources, such as the participation of residents in establishing and enforcing fisheries resource management measures (e.g., establishing no-fishing zones and prohibiting the use of fishing gear) can foster a sense of ownership over MPAs, leading to increased support and improved compliance with conservation measures. In addition, local people can also provide knowledge to complement scientific research in managing marine resources, increasing the community’s trust in MPA managers and scientists because they are also involved in data collection and developing measures (Begossi et al., 2011). In addition, engaging communities in marine resource management can increase their understanding of the resource composition and ecological status of MPAs, leading to the discovery or exploration of alternative livelihoods, such as eco-tourism and recreational fisheries. Developing these alternative economies will enhance the livelihoods of community residents and contribute to sustainably developing the community and the MPA (Begossi et al., 2011).
Secondly, community participation can improve the adaptive management of MPAs. Effective adaptive management requires clear conservation objectives, systematic monitoring, evaluating progress toward conservation objectives, and management structures that are flexible enough to adapt to changes in the external environment. In the early stages of marine protected area planning, Indigenous residents can provide reference in determining protection goals and scope based on their ecological knowledge. Incorporating traditional knowledge into MPA management provides an adaptive approach when responding to changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. Because of their long history of ocean use, there are many lessons to be learned from indigenous practices that can contribute to innovative thinking about ecosystem-based management in today’s world (Begossi et al., 2011). Monitoring and evaluation are necessary components of adaptive management, determining whether these protected areas have effectively achieved their goals after establishing MPAs (Begossi et al., 2011). However, the effectiveness of protection is often limited by insufficient investment and manpower for monitoring and enforcement. Therefore, monitoring and enforcement deficiencies can be overcome by encouraging resource users to develop and enforce protective regulations. Monitoring with the participation of local communities enables the collection of detailed observations over a long period. Communities can then feed this information back to the governing body to help it adjust its management strategies. Furthermore, combining community-based conservation programs with the top-down management of MPAs can increase flexibility, as this creates a multi-level governance system that ensures that multiple stakeholders can make recommendations to improve the effectiveness of MPA management in the face of uncertainty (Begossi et al., 2011).
Community-driven conservation has demonstrated success in increasing fish biomass, improving coral reef health, and enhancing biodiversity.
Locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), which are areas where communities manage marine resources, often show better resilience to environmental stressors because communities can adapt their practices to immediate ecological feedback.
Community conservation can improve local economies by sustaining fish stocks, promoting eco-tourism, and reducing resource conflicts. When communities benefit directly from conservation, they are more likely to support and sustain conservation efforts.
Strengthening community bonds and empowering local leaders also has lasting social impacts, fostering a stronger commitment to long-term sustainability.
Challenges and Limitations
Despite the advantages, community-driven conservation may face challenges, such as a lack of resources, training, and scientific knowledge.
Conflict can arise if there is unequal participation or if certain community members hold more power, which could lead to mismanagement or exploitation.
Community initiatives may also struggle to address larger threats like climate change, pollution, and illegal fishing by external actors.
Summary
In summary, community participation is important to marine protected areas. On the one hand, it can promote the rational management of marine resources to alleviate conflicts over resource use between communities and MPAs; on the other hand, it can improve the efficiency of MPA management by promoting adaptive management. These issues are difficult to resolve via top-down and scientist-led management. Therefore, community participation should be prioritized in constructing and managing MPAs in the future.
Conclusions
Marine conservation has faced an enormous threat in recent years owing to anthropic activities and global climate change. The importance of communities in the ecosystem and biodiversity protection has been gradually recognized by scientists. This study provides an overview of research on community participation in MPAs through bibliometric analysis. The results showed that the number of studies in this field experienced an upward trend. In addition, hot research topics were identified via keyword clustering, including community- based resource management, co-management models, and the methods of community participation in MPAs. This research topic has begun to integrate many emerging issues with the continuous expansion of its subjects. Finally, the analysis of actual cases in this study illustrates the role of community participation in planning, managing, and monitoring MPAs.
Given the above, future research should be conducted from multiple perspectives, and new topics like the resilience of social–ecological systems, citizen science, and artificial intelligence should also be reflected. Meanwhile, community participation models and paths need to be widely explored by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Finally, we suggest that researchers complement their research with local ecological knowledge, a critical source of ecological data.
In the future, research on community participation in MPAs will play a significant role in promoting the sustainable development of the global ocean and realizing the well-being of all humanity. This article reflects on the research status of community participation in MPAs. We emphasize the value of communities in terms of providing ecological knowledge and participating in planning and monitoring. The directions we propose for future research are beneficial for enriching the research content of community participation and improving study methodologies. Our research is expected to provide a research base for the coordinated and sustainable development of MPAs and communities.
Despite the above contributions, we acknowledge that this study has limitations. Firstly, bibliometric analysis focuses on quantitative analyses such as counting the number of documents, citations, keyword occurrences, etc., but it fails to complete context analysis and potentially ignores the research context and diversity of results in the literature. Secondly, since cluster analysis is based on statistical data and mathematical models, its results possess a certain level of abstraction, potentially allowing the introduction of subjectivity and bias when the results are interpreted. Finally, the Web of Science was the only data source used in this research. Despite the significant influence of this database, it lacks comprehensiveness to a certain extent. Therefore, future research scopes can be expanded to include other databases such as Scopus, and comparative analyses of the literature characteristics of community engagement in marine protected areas can be conducted based on different databases.
Recommendation
Research on community participation in MPAs has yielded many positive results. Based on previous research findings and case studies, this study proposes the following research directions to provide a reference for other researchers.
Research should be conducted from a multidisciplinary perspective, combining study content with emerging topics. Communities should be involved in all aspects of constructing and managing MPAs, such as marine ecosystem protection, marine resources management, and biodiversity conservation. Currently, most relevant research is focused on subjects such as environmental science, conservation biology, and oceanography. Further- more, economics is also an important research area in community participation. Increasing community incomes and promoting local economic development are the keys to enabling sustainably developed marine protected areas [96]. Furthermore, community-based monitoring programs for marine protected areas have increased in recent years, such as recording benthic habitat information by trained community divers. The information collected by the community can be integrated into Geographic Information Systems (GISs) to provide a data foundation for marine conservation (Espectato et al., 2022). This suggests that geography is also an important tool for future research on community participation in MPAs. In addition, from a psycho- logical perspective, assessing the acceptability of marine protected areas among community residents can improve the effectiveness of marine conservation and achieve long-term success (Espectato et al., 2022). Therefore, conducting research from a multidisciplinary perspective, such as through economics, geography, and psychology, can provide a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of community participation in marine protected areas, helping to explore more potential study possibilities in this field.
Meanwhile, researchers should pay more attention to new issues. In recent years, the resilience of social–ecological systems has become a hot issue, particularly in the context of global climate change and future crises (like the COVID-19 pandemic (Espectato et al., 2022)). Social– ecological system resilience is defined as the degree to which a coupled human–natural system can absorb disturbances and reorganize itself to maintain its basic state, structure, function, and feedback when exposed to changes in the external environment (Begossi et al., 2011). Re- search on the resilience of social–ecological systems formed by marine protected areas and communities is an important means of exploring the interactions between people and the ocean and promoting their sustainable development. In addition, the critical role of participatory science in marine protected area research should be recognized, such as citizen science and community science. Although these methods are not uncommon in marine protected areas, combining participatory science with emerging topics such as artificial intelligence will provide more effective assistance for information collection. An artificial intelligence-empowered citizen science approach has been proposed in relevant research and has been used to enhance intertidal conservation efforts (Begossi et al., 2022). In the future, more topics can be explored based on existing content to provide support for research on community participation in marine protected areas.
It is necessary to integrate quantitative methods with qualitative methods for research. Qualitative methods are mainly used to study community perceptions and attitudes toward MPA management, and quantitative approaches are usually used for statistical analyses of more objective data. With the deep study of community participation in MPAs, research results cannot be supported by a single qualitative or quantitative analysis. As a result, qualitative analysis should be combined with quantitative analysis to evaluate the results from subjective and objective perspectives.
Further studying the specific paths of community participation is necessary. Community- based management is a bottom-up management model that can alleviate conflicts and reduce the cost of protection. Meanwhile, respect for local culture and historical traditions improves the sense of ownership of community residents and increases their enthusiasm for participation. However, at this stage, the decision-making power is still held by the government or managing institutions in most MPAs, and communities are in a passive management situation. With increasing requirements for co-management from communities, we should start by decentralizing management and then seek a management mechanism that balances top-down and bottom-up approaches. Thus, research on participating paths needs to be broadened by exploring the possibilities of involving communities in MPA planning and design, as well as in daily supervision and monitoring.
Local knowledge could supplement gaps in scientific data. Traditional ecological knowledge is increasingly recognized as an important part of ecological protection and resource management studies. Some local people understand the status and dynamic changes in ecosystems and species well, and they could become a key source of primary environmental data. The researcher can also learn the needs of communities and provide more targeted suggestions for MPA policy formulation by communicating with local people.
