MPAasNbS
MPAasNbS: Unlocking the Potential of Marine Protected Areas as Effective Nature-based Solutions
Scientific supervisor: Stéphanie MANEL
Host institution: CNRS
Context
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) aim to protect, sustainably manage, and restore ecosystems to address societal challenges, while ensuring human well-being and generating benefits for biodiversity. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which aim to preserve marine biodiversity while promoting the sustainable management of human activities, are part of this approach. However, in practice, reconciling biodiversity conservation (the primary objective of MPAs) with benefits for users remains a challenge that requires new approaches.
The project
The MPAasNbS project aims to integrate environmental and socio-economic co-benefits into a network of MPAs in the French Mediterranean. Although the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by MPAs are well documented, several major gaps remain that prevent them from functioning as effective NbS, such as the absence of indicators for monitoring intraspecific diversity, the lack of standardized indicators, insufficient consideration of the socio-economic context and the perceptions of artisanal fishermen and other users, the absence of spatial planning that optimizes biological diversity and addresses socio-economic constraints, and the difficulty of adapting governance mechanisms to different spatial scales.
To address these gaps, the MPAasNbS project will pursue five objectives:
- Develop and test robust, multi-species genetic diversity indicators based on environmental DNA that are easy for managers to use.
- Include indicators of the various levels of diversity (genetic, taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic).
- Develop socioeconomic indicators and assess users’ perceptions of MPAs.
- Develop multi-objective spatial planning scenarios that integrate biodiversity levels with socioeconomic factors.
- Integrate these elements into multi-level governance mechanisms.
The project will propose a strategy for planning new, effective, and socially acceptable MPAs aimed at preserving biodiversity, in order to ensure the sustainable use of coastal marine resources by human activities. It will rely on a unique approach combining innovative tools: environmental DNA to characterize the multifaceted nature of biodiversity, and artificial intelligence to optimize multi-criteria spatial planning; and will leverage the creation of two new MPAs during the project, serving as pilot sites with a before-and-after protocol to establish robust causal links.