Costa, Alessia, van de Pol, Martijn, Atrigenio, Michael P., and Cabral, Reniel B. (2026) Synthesising ecological, socioeconomic, and governance guidelines for designing Marine Protected Areas. Biological Conservation, 313. 111602.

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Abstract

Designing successful, equitable, and just marine protected areas (MPAs) requires integrated consideration of ecological, socioeconomic, and governance dimensions. Such an integrative approach to MPA design is critical as countries establish more MPAs in line with the 30 × 30 initiative. We reviewed and synthesised 574 design guidelines across 62 peer-reviewed and grey literature publications to assess the extent to which ecological, socioeconomic, and/or governance guidelines are integrated in current MPA design. We identified a total of 26 broad guidelines (i.e., 9 ecological, 12 socioeconomic, and 5 governance) across a variety of MPA objectives. We found that documents that included only ecological guidelines were the most frequently used (60 %), followed by socioeconomic (3 %) and governance guidelines (3 %). Almost 20 % of the documents combined ecological guidelines with socioeconomic guidelines, while only 8 % combined ecological guidelines with governance guidelines. Fewer than 7 % of documents combined all three to achieve MPA objectives. Adequacy often co-occurs with Connectivity, Comprehensiveness, and/or Ecological Importance among the ecological guidelines. Similarly, Equity frequently co-occurs with Cultural Identity and/or Social Context in papers reporting socioeconomic guidelines. Such a pattern could not be established for governance guidelines due to the low number of documents with governance guidelines. While our results reveal an imbalance and a lack of integrative MPA design, with the prevailing MPA design guidelines being ecologically driven, our synthesis of MPA design guidelines across different MPA objectives provides opportunities for integrating these guidelines towards a holistic MPA design that benefits both nature and people.

Item ID:	90861
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1873-2917
Copyright Information:	© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	26 Feb 2026 00:30
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410404 Environmental management @ 40% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 20% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 40%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1802 Coastal and estuarine systems and management > 180201 Assessment and management of coastal and estuarine ecosystems @ 100%
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