Closing the compliance gap in marine protected areas with human behavioural sciences

Abstract

Advocates, practitioners and policy‐makers continue to use and advocate for marine protected areas (MPAs) to meet global ocean protection targets. Yet many of the worlds MPAs, and especially no‐take MPAs, are plagued by poaching and ineffective governance. Using a global dataset on coral reefs as an example, we quantify the potential ecological gains of governing MPAs to increase compliance, which we call the ‘compliance gap’. Using ecological simulations based on model posteriors of joint Bayesian hierarchical models, we demonstrate how increased compliance in no‐take MPAs could nearly double target fish biomass (91% increases in median fish biomass), and result in a 292% higher likelihood of encountering top predators. Achieving these gains and closing the compliance gap necessitates a substantial shift in approach and practice to go beyond optimizing enforcement, and towards governing for compliance. This will require engaging and integrating a broad suite of actors, principles, and practices across three key domains: (i)) harnessing social influence, (ii) integrating equity principles, and (iii) aligning incentives through market‐based instruments. Empowering and shaping communication between actor groups (e.g., between fishers, practitioners, and policy‐makers) using theoretically underpinned approaches from the behavioural sciences is one of the most essential, but often underserved aspects of governing MPAs. We therefore close by highlighting how this cross‐cutting tool could be further integrated in governance to bolster high levels of compliance in MPAs.

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