Frontiers in Marine Science (May 2014)
Comparative analysis of management plans of the Marine Protected Areas of four European Atlantic countries
Abstract
Management plans for Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in four European Atlantic countries (UK, France, Portugal and Spain) were analyzed comparatively. The information used in the analysis was related to the development and the content of the plans, as governance, control and enforcement. It was collected through questionnaires from a total of 125 management plans, corresponding to 234 marine protected areas. The overall priority goal in all of the management plans was biodiversity conservation and restoration, except in Spain were management of exploited natural resources was always present as an objective. In general the management plans have more objectives than described in the MPA designation, as to improve environment education and raising of public awareness or to maintain key ecological functions. However these objectives are qualitative in all of the management plans and only 15% of them have quantitative objectives, mainly in France and Portugal. Over 70% of the management plans studied provided a regular monitoring program and approximately half provided indicators to monitor each of the MPA objectives, except in the case of Portugal (15%).
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