Real-world progress in overcoming the challenges of adaptive spatial ...

Biological Conservation 181 (2015) 54–63

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Perspective

Real-world progress in overcoming the challenges of adaptive spatial planning in marine protected areas Morena Mills a,j,⇑, Rebecca Weeks b, Robert L. Pressey b, Mary G. Gleason c, Rose-Liza Eisma-Osorio d, Amanda T. Lombard e, Jean M. Harris f, Annette B. Killmer g, Alan White h, Tiffany H. Morrison i a

Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia The Nature Conservancy, 99 Pacific Street, Suite 200G, Monterey, CA 93940, USA d College of Law, University of Cebu, Banilad, Cebu City 6000, Philippines e Botany Department, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa f Scientific Services, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Port Shepstone 4241, South Africa g Inter-American Development Bank, 1300 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC, USA h The Nature Conservancy, 923 Nu’uanu Avenue, Honolulu, USA i School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia j Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia b c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 20 March 2014 Received in revised form 11 October 2014 Accepted 24 October 2014

Keywords: Adaptive planning Systematic conservation planning Adaptive management Implementation Priority setting Uncertainty

a b s t r a c t Guidelines for spatial planning, including those from integrated coastal management, systematic conservation planning, and marine spatial planning, have conceived planning processes as iterative and adaptive. Adaptive spatial planning is advocated because it allows decisions to be improved with new data, as knowledge accumulates on management within particular contexts, and to fine-tune spatial management arrangements to fit constantly changing social-ecological systems. Yet, to date there have been very few reviews of the process and practice of adaptive spatial planning in real-world contexts. Here we review the theoretical challenges presented in the literature on adaptive spatial planning against 5 case studies of adaptive planning in the marine realm: Kubulau District, Fiji; Southeast Cebu, Philippines; the Great Barrier Reef, Australia; central California, USA; and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Our aim is to assess the extent to which the theoretical challenges have been addressed in practice. We find that none of the case studies analyzed effectively addressed all the challenges of adaptive spatial planning. Differences in legislation, resources, and capacity to undertake adaptive spatial planning mean that each planning process is operated differently in each case study. For example, adaptive spatial planning can occur through a structured and institutionalized approach when resources and government support are available, but it can also operate in a relatively more opportunistic and flexible way if governments are weaker but civil society has strong champions. Although the case studies addressed aspects of adaptive planning, some persistent challenges remain, including scientific gaps regarding triggers for adaptation and unsympathetic institutional and policy contexts and planning cultures. These challenges must be addressed before all the benefits of adaptive spatial planning can be realized. Ó 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Contents 1. 2.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Challenges associated with adaptive spatial planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. Explicit recognition of the need and triggers for adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Shared understanding between groups regarding the purpose of plans and why plans must be adapted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Use of a prototyping approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4. Development of sufficient adaptive capacity to undertake ongoing and explicit learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5. Supportive institutional settings that are sustained through time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

⇑ Corresponding author. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.10.028 0006-3207/Ó 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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3.

2.6. Capacity to engage with organizations Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

and stakeholders operating ....................... ....................... .......................

1. Introduction Spatial planning for natural-resource management, which allocates resource use and management to specific areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives (Ehler and Douvere, 2007), is expanding worldwide and has become institutionalized within individual countries. Guidelines for spatial planning, including those from integrated coastal management (White et al., 2005), systematic conservation planning (Groves, 2003; Knight et al., 2006a; Margules and Pressey, 2000; Pressey and Bottrill, 2009), and marine spatial planning (Collie et al., 2012; Ehler and Douvere, 2009), conceive planning processes as iterative and adaptive. The adaptive nature of planning is particularly important in the transition from spatial design – the allocation of notional conservation actions or human uses to specific areas – to application – the implementation of actions on the ground or in the water. Plans benefit from being adaptive for several reasons, including (Pressey et al., 2013): (1) the opportunity to fine-tune the plan so the intended actions better fit the context, feasibility, and management limitations of a region; (2) to correct for mistakes in data, or change the plan based on surprises not foreseeable in the planning process; (3) to improve decisions, based on accumulated new data; and (4) to incorporate learning about the social-ecological systems in which the plan is being implemented. However, despite the many potential benefits of adaptive planning, spatial plans for natural resource management have been largely static. This is often because there is a lack of commitment to and capacity for an ongoing adaptive process, with potentially high political and economic costs. Instead, multiple institutions commit to planning for a short period, often too short for effective implementation, and sometimes not learning from the processes previously undertaken by others (Holness and Biggs, 2011). Spatial planning is frequently undertaken as a one-off project, resulting in plans that quickly become outdated and fail to be implemented or to fully achieve their objectives. Yet, to capitalize on the substantial investment in spatial planning around the world, plans must be seen, not as static products, but as starting points for ongoing adaptation and refinement (Pressey et al., 2013), even if adaptation involves additional costs. Adaptive planning is necessary to ensure that spatial plans remain relevant, living documents, continually adjusted in response to improved understanding of opportunities for implementation, new data, revised objectives, and feedback on the effectiveness of implemented management actions (Grantham et al., 2009; Pressey et al., 2013). Examples of ways in which spatial planning can be adaptive include updating plans in response to additional data from consultation processes (EKZNW, 2012; Lewis et al., 2003), reviewing and revising plans post-implementation (Henson et al., 2009; Weeks and Jupiter, 2013), and iteratively modifying plans to better address local or regional objectives (Harris et al., 2011; Mills et al., 2010). Adaptive spatial planning can occur either where plans are purposely conceived as experiments (c.f. ‘active’ adaptive management; McCarthy and Possingham, 2007) or where plans are progressively updated in response to new information through a ‘‘learning by doing’’ approach (Walters and Hilborn, 1978). Salafsky et al. (2002) identified three levels at which natural resource management can be adaptive: the project, the portfolio, and the discipline. Project-level adaptive management involves a

at multiple levels ............... ............... ...............

......................................... ......................................... ......................................... .........................................

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cycle of planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation (Plummer, 2009) implemented within a single location (analogous to ‘‘Conservation Action Planning’’ undertaken by The Nature Conservancy; Dudley et al., 2007). For example, the level of surveillance of a marine no-take zone might change in response to increasing numbers of poachers. Portfolio-level adaptive management involves a similar cycle undertaken across a network or portfolio of sites (e.g. management implemented across several locations which, in the case of a network, would be complementary). We conceive the spatial component of this portfolio-level planning and adaptation cycle as ‘adaptive spatial planning’. Discipline-level adaptive management is described as the result of knowledge accumulation by scientists and stakeholders around the world creating a body of knowledge and fostering improved decision-making. Discipline-level adaptive management, as described by Salafsky et al. (2002), is much broader than the scale at which conservation planning or marine spatial planning are undertaken (Salafsky et al., 2002), and might progressively refine the perception of best-practice in spatial planning. While much has been written about adaptive management at the project scale (e.g. Lee, 1999; McLain and Lee, 1996; Walters, 1997), less attention has been given to understanding adaptive spatial planning (i.e. adaptive management at the portfolio scale). A substantial technical literature on evaluation and adaptation at policy and program levels emerged in the late 1980s out of the urban planning domain, but with no explicit spatial dimension (e.g. Patton, 1997; Talen, 1996). Incorporating the spatial component, Kato and Ahern (2008) explored the potential of an adaptive approach to landscape planning for water resource management and, in the process, identified key concepts and principles for adaptation to address uncertainty. Grantham et al. (2009) discussed the importance of incorporating explicit learning processes into conservation planning frameworks, highlighting the critical need for embracing adaptation in planning. Pressey et al. (2013) reviewed the reasons why plans should be adaptive, and the conceptual, operational, institutional, and policy implications of plans being, or needing to be, dynamic. Yet, we are aware of only one study focused on describing on-ground challenges and solutions to adaptive conservation planning: the one describing the South African National Parks experience (Holness and Biggs, 2011). Here we add to this literature by synthesizing the challenges encountered in undertaking adaptive spatial planning in five marine regions. In addition to expanding the set of practical examples, we use our case studies, in combination with previous literature on conservation planning and more broadly, to identify the broad set of key challenges applicable to adaptive planning in general. We assess the reality of adaptive spatial planning for marine resource management through five case studies (Table 1): Kubulau District, Fiji; Southeast Cebu, Philippines; the Great Barrier Reef, Australia; central California, USA; and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The foundation for this paper comprises discussions at two meetings on adaptive spatial planning for marine conservation: the first, a workshop at the offices of WWF-US in 2010; and the second, a symposium at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, Canada, in May 2011. These discussions led us to interrogate each case study against the general model for adaptive planning found in the literature. Our aim is to provide guidance for others to refine and adapt these examples for their own situations.

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Table 1 Background on case studies. Case study

Planning region extent

Governance context

Ecosystembased management in Kubulau District, Fiji

260 km2 traditional fisheries management area (qoliqoli)

District resource management Coral reef ecosystems, associated inshore fisheries committee with representatives from ten communities, supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society

Coastal resource management in Southeast Cebu, Philippines

1253 km2 municipal waters (to 15 km offshore)

Management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

344,400 km2 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park

Protection of seafloor communities from bottom trawling in California, USA SeaPlan: a finescale plan for the eastern seaboard province of KwaZuluNatal, South Africa

60,000 km2 area of the central Coast of California

Southeast Cebu Coastal Resource Management Council (comprising seven coastal municipalities), supported by technicalresource personnel from local government and the NGO Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (Federal Government agency, responsible for managing the GBR), the Queensland Government, and numerous advisory groups and committees representing stakeholders The Nature Conservancy, local fishermen, National Marine Fisheries Service (Federal Government body responsible for managing fisheries and protecting Essential Fish Habitat) Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, (the conservation authority for the Province)

125,000 km2 of the southwest Indian Ocean adjacent to the South African coastline

Ecological context

Goal

Motivation for adaptive planning

Key references

Review boundaries and management rules of a network of three no-take areas and 17 communitymanaged customary fisheries closures

Results from biological monitoring indicated variable management effectiveness of existing MPAs; new information on coral reef resilience to climate change impacts The need for better coordination across a broader geographic area to address emerging pressures for fisheries and to maximize benefits from protected areas

Jupiter and Egli (2011) and Weeks and Jupiter (2013)

A review of the previous zoning plan found the amount and distribution of no-take protected areas were inadequate to protect the range of marine biodiversity in the Park

Day (2008), Fernandes et al. (2005) and McCook et al. (2010)

Fringing coral reef ecosystems and near shore fisheries along about 100 km of coastline in the Cebu-Bohol Strait

To integrate and expand coastal management efforts across seven municipalities, and form an ecological MPA network

An extensive coral reef ecosystem comprising 2900 individual reefs, more than 900 islands and coral cays, adjacent inshore waters, and deep oceanic waters

Rezone the GBR Marine Park to increase its adequacy in achieving conservation objectives

Between 0 and 3000 m To design trawl closure areas depth off central California to: (1) protect priority conservation areas; (2) reduce trawling effort; and (3) minimize the economic impact of trawl closures on the remaining fishery To identify focal areas for Shoreline habitats, expansion of protected areas estuaries, shelf, consolidated sediments and to meet objectives for representation and rock reefs, canyons, and persistence of biodiversity as abyssal areas well as objectives for national protected areas, and to move towards implementation

2. Challenges associated with adaptive spatial planning Implementing adaptive spatial planning presents diverse challenges (Table 2). While some challenges are common to any spatial planning process (e.g. adaptive planning as a transdisciplinary approach not widely understood or practiced), we focus here on six that our case studies fully or partially tackled (Table 2, challenges in italics). These include: (1) explicit recognition of the need and triggers for adaptation; (2) shared understanding between groups regarding the purpose of plans and why plans must be adapted; (3) use of a prototyping approach; (4) development of sufficient adaptive capacity to undertake ongoing and explicit learning; (5) supportive institutional settings; and (6) capacity to engage with organizations and stakeholders operating at multiple levels. We discuss below each of these challenges within the context of our five case studies. 2.1. Explicit recognition of the need and triggers for adaptation Plans are more likely to be adapted, and therefore to remain useful, if planning processes explicitly recognize the need for adaptation and include provisions to support an adaptive planning cycle. These provisions could include commitment from lead organizations to steer planning outputs toward outcomes over prolonged time periods, resources dedicated to protracted planning and learning processes (e.g. through monitoring and evaluation; Pressey et al., 2013), and explicit definition of one or more triggers

EismaOsorio et al. (2009)

Prior inadequate management Gleason had led to a large ecological et al. (2013a) footprint for trawling and overfishing of some species

A National Protected Area Expansion Strategy (NPAES) was adopted in 2008 in line with CBD targets, and there was a lack of spatially-explicit recommendations for expanded marine protection at a local scale

Harris et al. (2011) and EKZNW (2012)

that initiate review cycles. Given the investment required to produce a conservation plan, conceiving of a plan as a single step in an adaptive cycle, as opposed to an endpoint, can be daunting (Pressey et al., 2013). Resistance to adaptive management might arise from the increased workload generated, or simply because stakeholders prefer certainty and stability and find the concept of an adaptive plan inherently uncertain and unstable (Grantham et al., 2009). Nevertheless, our case studies provide examples of explicit recognition of the need for plans to be updated, although triggers for adaptation (e.g. changes in water quality, fish populations, disease prevalence in corals, or legal, economic and sociopolitical context) are often poorly defined. Explicitly incorporating revisions to the plan from the outset of the planning process, through legislation or the plan itself, commits changes of the plan through time. From the outset of the spatial planning process for the Great Barrier Reef (in 1975), there was recognition that the zoning plan would need to be flexible, to account for increasing levels of resource use and advances in knowledge that would revise ecological principles, and to respond to ecological, social, and economic changes (Day, 2008). Similarly, the Kubulau EBM Plan and South Africa’s SeaPlan explicitly provided for review and amendment as necessary every five years. While the prompts for adaptation in Fiji were monitoring results and evolving management priorities (WCS, 2009), in South Africa the motivations for change were emerging threats such as allocation of mining rights in the ocean. Recognition of the need for flexibility in a plan is strongly influenced by decision makers’

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M. Mills et al. / Biological Conservation 181 (2015) 54–63 Table 2 Challenges of adaptive spatial planning as identified in the literature review. Those challenges discussed further in the text are in italics. Challenge Explicit recognition of need and triggers for adaptation

Shared understanding between groups regarding the purpose of plans and why plans should be adapted

Use of a prototyping approach

Development of sufficient adaptive capacity to undertake ongoing and explicit learning

Supportive institutional setting

Capacity to engage with institutions and stakeholders operating at multiple levels

Anticipating required changes to regional plans

Decision-support tools for dynamic plans

References Those involved must agree that the plan should be adapted to better achieve its goals. Major changes might be needed as a result of reviews of effectiveness of applied actions, new information, new objectives, or changes to the socialecological system. Ideally the triggers for adaptation should be decided beforehand and be based on scientific guidelines. The triggers should allow for sufficient time to assess the biological impacts of the plan, and provide stability and resource security to stakeholders. However, long minimum review intervals can lock in mistakes for extended periods Those involved in the planning process will have complex and competing interests and values. Stakeholders might be reluctant to re-open a negotiation process, especially if the political or social contexts seem unfavourable from their perspectives. If the planning goals are not well accepted and understood by all involved, it will be increasingly difficult to measure and monitor progress of different variables and to agree on triggers for adaptation Up to a point, it is critical to embark on planning processes with the best available data as opposed to waiting for new and better data to be collected. This decision will depend, however, on factors such as the quality of available data, time and funds needed to improve data sets, and potential for loss of important areas while new data are compiled. Using available data enables planners to take advantage of windows of opportunity for influencing other spatial plans (e.g. for development) and initiating on-ground action Those involved in the planning process, including the planning team, implementers, and other key stakeholders, must jointly hold a critical mass of skills for effective adaptation. High turnover rates of staff in conservation agencies mean that skills acquired to undertake adaptive planning can be lost. Additionally, changes to plans can require new staff or new skills. Consequently, continual training of staff is necessary to keep pace with developments of data, software, and planning methods Institutional needs for successful dynamic plans, include (Pressey et al., 2013): an institutional home for data and the planning process; at least one organization committing to steering the outputs towards outcomes; and establishing and retaining capacity in planning, application, and involvement of stakeholders. In practice these requirements can be difficult to meet because many organizations or many parts of organizations can be responsible for different parts of the planning process. As well, funders can be uncomfortable with the uncertainty implied by adaptive management strategies, and stakeholders, including implementers, might not share an interest in continued learning and adaptive planning Adjustments to plans are required as new information emerges at scales different from the one at which the plan was conceptualized. A common example is the need for regional-scale plans to accommodate patchy, local-scale data. The ability to engage with institutions at multiple levels and respond to insights from different scales of concern can help to ensure the plan is implemented and that the resulting local actions achieve emergent regional-scale properties such as complementarity and connectivity Further development of approaches to managing dynamic changes to plans would help planners to understand the factors that influence the extent to which plans have to change. Factors that might influence the degree of changes required include the resolution of the data used for planning, involvement of stakeholders within the planning process, and characteristics of social–ecological systems Generally, decision-support systems for conservation planning are used to produce a static map, although recently developed software such as Marxan and Zonation are being used in an increasingly interactive manner

Holness and Biggs (2011), Grantham et al. (2009), Kato and Ahern (2008), Pressey et al. (2013) and Day (2008)

Holness and Biggs (2011) and Kato and Ahern (2008)

Holness and Biggs (2011) and Knight et al. (2006b)

Holness and Biggs (2011), Grantham et al. (2009), Kato and Ahern (2008), Sayer et al. (2008) and Day (2008)

Pressey et al. (2013), Grantham et al. (2009) and Kato and Ahern (2008)

Pressey et al. (2013) and Morrison (2007)

Pressey et al. (2013)

Pressey et al. (2013) and Game et al. (2011)

(continued on next page)

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Table 2 (continued) Challenge Maintenance of appreciation for complexity of management decisions and the development of appropriate attitudes. All involved should embrace failure as part of learning

Transdisciplinary approach not widely understood, practiced nor supported

References Ignoring complexity encourages the simplistic interpretation that there is a single correct answer to resource management, thereby hindering learning. Planners should reduce the risks of failure but be willing to accept and learn from errors. Unfortunately, to date, negative outcomes of resource management decisions are often under-reported because the stigma of failure can lead to embarrassment or diminished future financial support. This also highlights the need for donors to be better informed about the complexity involved in the projects they fund and the need for adaptive planning to maximize the likelihood of a project being implemented successfully Adaptive planning necessarily involves a transdisciplinary team because planning and management will involve both people and natural resources. Participation of a range of academics, practitioners, and other stakeholders (e.g. industry) from the beginning of the planning process will help to build trust, shared visions and consensus, and aid in communicating the inevitable uncertainty around planning decisions

awareness and understanding: in Cebu, the interest of the local governments to respond to adaptation of marine protected areas was almost directly proportional to their level of understanding about how the marine environment functions. Ideally, the trigger prompting adaptation is explicitly linked to the objectives of the plan. However, this is rarely the case, due to the lack of information on how adaptive planning can be operationalized (e.g. science-based guidelines for adaptation), and because institutional and political triggers are difficult to isolate and predict (Aerts and Honnay, 2011; Pressey et al., 2013). The 2006 Review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act stipulates that, given the response times of biological and human systems, and to provide stability for business and communities, a review and amendment of all or part of the zoning plan should not be commenced for at least seven years following the 2004 rezoning (there is no maximum stated review period). The seven-year minimum review interval for the Great Barrier Reef zoning reflects the need for resource security for extractive and tourism industries and likely timeframes for ecological response to management; however, specific triggers for modifying the zoning have not been made explicit. The rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef was highly contentious, and changes to zoning after the minimum review period have not been publicly discussed by the management authority. While a five-year review period was initially specified for Kubulau’s EBM Plan, a major revision was undertaken after just three years, partly in response to deadlines specified by donors (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). In this case, funding came with pressure to ensure milestones are achieved within particular funding cycles, and these milestones had shorter timeframes than desired by communities or planners. Planners must trade-off the relative advantage of allowing enough time to see the impacts of actions, versus the advantage of making the plan flexible enough to incorporate new ideas and information to determine actions. It has been suggested (Sabatier, 1986) that research to assess the effectiveness of policy implementation can take more than a decade, and even effectively implemented management actions can take several decades to achieve desired outcomes (Abesamis and Russ, 2010; Babcock et al., 2010). Consequently, changing plans too quickly might not allow for longer-term outcomes to materialize. However, other factors might still provide compelling reasons to alter regional plans in the short-term. For example, resource users can devise new fishing techniques, change their patterns or areas of fishing, and new information can trigger changes to the plan. Flexibility is increased if plans include spatial management tools in addition to protected

Holness and Biggs (2011), Kato and Ahern (2008) and Redford and Taber (2000)

Kato and Ahern (2008)

areas and internal zonings, allowing fine-tuning within the overall spatial architecture (Day, 2008) without complete redesign. For example, within the GBR zoning plan, adaptive management allows flexibility to respond to feedbacks in the form of permitting, commercial quotas, recreational bag limits, and temporal closures (McCook et al., 2010). 2.2. Shared understanding between groups regarding the purpose of plans and why plans must be adapted To develop a shared understanding of the need for change, adaptive planning requires sustained commitment and engagement of stakeholders over extended periods, as plans are implemented, reviewed, and revised. Planning for management of natural resources is often highly controversial and characterized by conflict among different stakeholder groups (Gleason et al., 2010). A well-designed process contributes to shared understanding in several ways: bringing together in a constructive setting stakeholders who might not otherwise collaborate; providing a forum for voicing concerns and receiving answers; providing information in a visual, intuitive, and hands-on manner; and allowing groups to jointly explore management scenarios and their implications (e.g. Gleason et al., 2013b; Pierce et al., 2005) A shared understanding of the purpose of the plan and need for adaptation will aid in developing the buy-in needed for adaptation. Collaboration among and between scientists, government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders throughout the planning process has been key to the development of the initial and future versions of the spatial plans in our case studies (e.g. Fernandes et al., 2005; Gleason et al., 2013a; Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). In California, the failing condition of the Federally-managed groundfish fishery, which had been declared by the federal government as an economic and environmental disaster, converged fishing and conservation interests around reducing both effort and the ecological footprint of bottom trawling (Gleason et al., 2013a). Stakeholders understood the purpose of the plan from the outset: a compromise solution that could help to reform the fishery. To further generate a shared vision for planning and adaptation, identification of trawl closures was collaborative, bringing together fine-scale knowledge of fishing and data on biological diversity (Gleason et al., 2013a) to support Federal designation of closed areas. This cooperation motivated a subsequent partnership of conservation and fishing interests focused on adaptive management of areas still open to fishing. Adaptation outside closures involved further zoning in relation to gear type to reduce

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bycatch of overfished species, to be updated as new information became available. Near real-time data on location of bycatch were shared broadly among stakeholders and voluntary closures were adjusted regularly throughout the year. Incorporating stakeholders in assessing impacts of the implemented plan further engages them in management, and increases support if impacts align with stakeholder interests. The community-based Capricorn Reef Monitoring Program (CapReef), in the Great Barrier Reef, was established following the 2004 GBR zoning plan (Almany et al., 2009). Since 2007, recreational fishers from CapReef have assisted scientists with research on larval connectivity in the Keppel Islands (Harrison et al., 2012), simultaneously increasing research capacity and sustaining community engagement with scientists and managers (Almany et al., 2009). In 2008, following feedback from the community, sites within Keppel Bay were designated as ‘no anchoring’ areas, and temporary bans and reduced recreational bag limits were introduced for snapper species in response to declining stocks (examples of within-zone adaptive management). 2.3. Use of a prototyping approach A preliminary version of a plan, or prototype, which is understood to be subject to ongoing refinement and require iterative stakeholder involvement both prior to and following implementation, has advantages and disadvantages. Consequently, prototype plans can be used in different ways. Based on the judgement of planners, proceeding with prototype plans when information is sufficient to justify decisions about conservation priorities can facilitate implementation if participants in the process acknowledge that ongoing adaptation will probably be needed. Alternatively, if information is insufficient to warrant decisions about priorities, prototype plans could still be used to catalyze discussions about data needs, objectives, involvement of stakeholders, and ways of identifying priorities when information becomes adequate. Before deciding how to proceed with implementation, the advantages and disadvantages of prototype plans must be carefully considered. Early decisions expressed in prototype plans can be useful, especially for areas generally acknowledged to be priorities for management, because planners will rarely have all the information they would like before making decisions. Investments to improve data are subject to diminishing returns, and long delays before implementation can lead to opportunity costs as conservation features are lost (Grantham et al., 2009). Rapid assessments based on key data layers can be effective strategically and allow timely decisions (Knight et al., 2006b), taking advantage of, for example, windows of opportunity shaped by public acceptance or favorable political agendas (Holness and Biggs, 2011), and allowing management benefits to be observed. Demonstrating tangible benefits of management along the way is key to maintaining support and the engagement of stakeholders, and can create buy-in for the conservation initiative and the need for adaptive planning and management (White et al., 2002). However, working with uncertainty can have drawbacks by making buy-in to management decisions more difficult, especially when decisions limit economic opportunity (Hanak and Moreno, 2012). Attempts to implement prototype plans that do not represent stakeholder needs could create so much political resistance that progress in achieving conservation might be derailed. Prototype plans were used to engage stakeholders and build support for the planning process and subsequent versions of the plan in South Africa. Despite a long history of systematic conservation planning in the terrestrial realm, applications in the sea have lagged behind. South Africa’s prototype marine plan was SeaPlan. The initial challenge was to achieve buy-in for the systematic

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process amongst marine scientists. This was facilitated by an enabling policy environment at both provincial and national levels and by a number of stakeholder workshops, aimed at marine scientists, held around the country by the core planning team. The enabling environment was attributable to the widely accepted use of systematic conservation planning in the terrestrial realm and national commitment to protected area expansion to meet global targets. The first iteration of SeaPlan’s proposed MPA network demonstrated the derivation of provincial biodiversity targets and the need for target achievement within MPAs. Scientists and civil society stakeholders were then able to measure the contributions of their own MPA recommendations to these targets and subsequently alter their initial recommendations to better achieve the provincial targets. Given sufficient capacity is available for monitoring and adaptation, prototype plans can form a platform for the implementation of MPAs using the best available science. Exemplifying the use of prototype plans to inform future iterations of the same plan is Kubulau, a network of marine protected areas (MPAs) planned and implemented in 2005 using the best available ecological and socioeconomic information. The Wildlife Conservation Society had been approached to help with planning in 2003 and, during 2004 and 2005, focused on introducing the communities to concepts around MPA networks. While some data were collected to inform planning, insights into the impacts of different forms of management were unavailable. After the first iteration of the plan was implemented, the impact of spatial management was monitored for several years. In response to these new data, the boundaries of MPAs within the network were adjusted accordingly (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). The first iteration of the MPA network could be considered a prototype, which demonstrated the benefits of natural-resource management to stakeholder communities; in the second round of planning, communities were willing to set aside a greater area in MPAs, possibly as a result of these observed benefits (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). Prototype plans can also catalyze action within and serve as prototypes for adjacent regions. Both the Kubulau EBM Plan and South Africa’s SeaPlan were templates for natural-resource planning in adjacent marine areas (Harris et al., 2011; Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). The Southeast Cebu governance network has been replicated in other parts of the Philippines, with network members from Cebu sharing their experiences and supporting new initiatives (Eisma-Osorio et al., 2009; Horigue et al., 2012). In Cebu, the prototype plan allowed people to learn about planning tools and principles so ideas and techniques from other regions could be imported and refined for local settings. In South Africa, SeaPlan was successful in building good will and social capital among previously isolated scientific and planning institutions that now agree on an overarching planning process and the use of surrogates for biodiversity and ecological processes. It brought data sets together from many different institutions and individuals and remained as transparent, consultative, and inclusive as possible. These principles have formed the foundation of future marine conservation planning in South Africa, and will guide new initiatives as the pressure on marine resources escalates. 2.4. Development of sufficient adaptive capacity to undertake ongoing and explicit learning Adaptive spatial planning requires a sustained critical mass of skills to interpret changes in natural and socioeconomic characteristics of managed areas and the wider region, and to adjust management actions accordingly. Planning teams often lack the resources, expertise, traditions, and culture for evaluation and adaptation (Aerts and Honnay, 2011; Bottrill and Pressey, 2012), and a lack of capacity for change is often cited as a reason for plans

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failing to adapt (Holness and Biggs, 2011). Maintaining sufficient adaptive capacity for learning is difficult within any planning project, even with institutional commitment (below), because rates of burnout and turnover of leaders are high (e.g. Byron et al., 2001). Four essential forms of sustained learning are apparent in our case studies: (1) within the planning team; (2) across sites or networks; (3) through monitoring and evaluating plans; and (4) from parallel planning processes in other parts of the world. Planning teams working together on multiple plans, and well connected planning teams continuously communicating about experiences on different plans ensure experience in planning is sustained and transferred from one plan to the other. However, interactions can become reliant on funding for meetings or workshops as groups grow from planning teams to networks of teams. In South Africa, the continued presence of a small group of dedicated conservation planners, working on all of South Africa’s marine plans, and at different scales, and well connected to terrestrial planners, has ensured that planning processes remain linked and that they draw from and inform terrestrial planning processes. An advantage is that lessons learned from one planning process can rapidly be applied in others, with strong potential for lessons to be translated across marine, fresh water, estuarine, and terrestrial ecosystems. In Southeast Cebu, a social network of stakeholders operating at different sites provides a mechanism to encourage continuous learning through sharing experiences, resources, and responsibilities associated with MPA implementation and enforcement (Aliño et al., 2006; Horigue et al., 2012). The social network provides a practical mechanism by which experiences and management skills can be shared, so that continuous learning occurs. It also creates a platform to address policy differences and common issues, but depends on funding to facilitate meetings and workshops. Such funding is currently being provided by the local governments either wholly or in part through matching arrangements with outside organizations working in their areas of concern. Resources restrict the extent to which monitoring can be undertaken, so targeting monitoring to assess the impact of management on plan objectives and communicating these impacts effectively is key to adaptive planning. In the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, there is well-established institutional support for monitoring over varying temporal scales, from daily to annual, to assess compliance with and effects of the zoning plan (McCook et al., 2010). Information is summarized in the Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report, produced every 5 years, to feed into the adaptive management cycle (McCook et al., 2010). In Kubulau, there has been scope for data from monitoring to more substantially alter the configuration of managed areas (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). The Kubulau MPA network essentially serves as an opportunistic experimental design, with fishery closures of different sizes and with different permitted harvest frequencies. The importance of adaptation through monitoring the effects of closures has been emphasized since the initial plan was implemented, and closures have since been reconfigured. Nevertheless, whilst monitoring data confirmed community perceptions of how MPAs were performing, capacity for collection and analysis of data and, just as importantly, momentum and support for adaptive planning, was provided by an external organization, the Wildlife Conservation Society (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). Dependence upon external supporting organizations to provide technical and financial resources for planning and evaluation is common in many planning contexts (e.g. Horigue et al., 2012) and renders these processes vulnerable to withdrawal of support. All case studies were influenced by planning processes and research occurring within other countries through face-to-face exchanges between stakeholders, as well through gray literature and scientific reports providing advice on planning, including ways of formulating objectives and setting parameters for spatial design (e.g. size and spacing of marine protected areas).

Holness and Biggs (2011) proposed that contrasting management prescriptions should be established as experiments, also referred to as ‘active’ adaptive management (Walters, 1986). We found two examples of this type of learning within our case studies. The GBR’s ‘‘Effects of Line-Fishing’’ experiment actively altered fishing closures to experimentally test effects of zoning on fish stocks (Mapstone et al., 2004). This approach was motivated by the lack of information on how to manage the fishery, the simultaneous increase in effort in the fishery, and a government review of arrangements for fishery management. Collaboration between government bodies and universities ensured high levels of research capacity and financial commitment to this project, which ran for 11 years (up to 2006). In California, after trawl closures were put in place, the fishermen conducted collaborative research with NGOs and the regional fisheries management council and demonstrated that switching from trawl gear to hook and line gear was both economically viable and resulted in lower bycatch and a smaller fishing footprint. 2.5. Supportive institutional settings that are sustained through time Adaptive spatial planning requires institutions that can manage and facilitate adjustments to plans when required. Up until the late 1980s, most environmental organizations were more concerned with plan-making processes and failed to prioritize the implementation and evaluation phases (Morrison et al., 2010), providing little or no support for subsequent iterations of plans. While focus on implementation has increased, few organizations support ongoing evaluation and adaptation. Additionally, organizations leading planning processes often value short-term outputs over long-term outcomes (Bottrill and Pressey, 2012), without counting the costs of failing to implement and adapt plans (Pressey et al., 2013; Sayer et al., 2008). Government and donor priorities, for example, are generally shaped by election and funding cycles, which might not align with the (typically longer) timeframes required for adaptive planning (Kato and Ahern, 2008). Changing the culture of stakeholders to see planning—or adaptive management—as a continual process, instead of an endpoint, is difficult (Grantham et al., 2009; Kato and Ahern, 2008). Adaptive planning is also facilitated by clearly defined and sustained leadership for planning, implementation, monitoring, and adaptation. Sustained leadership and management of the Great Barrier Reef is provided by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), a national government agency with responsibility for planning and implementing marine conservation actions. GBRMPA provides a strong institutional environment for adaptive spatial planning, including expansion from marine-based actions into land-based programs concerned with land-uses in the reef’s catchments and their influence on water quality (e.g. educational programs to minimize fertilizer runoff Brodie and Waterhouse, 2012). National legislation underpinning the Authority (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010) provided the continuity of resources and expertise to develop the knowledge and relationships necessary for adaptive planning. Even so, the Authority is challenged by lack of influence on emerging threats to the reef such as industrialization of the reef coastline, residential and tourism development, and broader changes to government environment funding and decision-making (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010). Adaptation can also be resisted by stakeholders (e.g. recreational fishing tackle industry) whose enterprises could be affected by changes to zoning. In most parts of the world, this level of support will not be feasible, so organizations involved in adaptive spatial planning opportunistically cobble together projects that promote long-term perspectives on planning and support adaptation. In the Philippines case, there is a provision in the national fisheries code for

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local government units to collaborate on fisheries management policies and enforcement at a scale commensurate with the managed fisheries resources. However, the local governments involved in implementing management are generally focused strongly on actions in the field (e.g. implementation). While they tend to be willing to revise the actions periodically, adaptation is not consistent across many local government units. Consequently, there is often a large gap in efforts and support for the adaptation of plans that coordinate actions across larger scales and local ad hoc implementation. Visionary local government leaders with some funding are required to strengthen links between adaptive plans and actions, and there are inconsistencies throughout the country in this regard. Donor-funded projects that have this vision are often the catalyst that trigger the implementation of plans and lead to the adaptation of actions with a larger than local government jurisdictional scale.

Jupiter, 2013), increasing capacity for adaptation. For example, communities managing MPAs with different sizes and frequencies of permitted harvest could compare ecological outcomes, and adapt their designs and prescriptions accordingly. Adaptive management undertaken by individual villages would have lacked this network-scale perspective. In South Africa, the shared responsibility between national and provincial agencies for environmental management, and cooperation and liaison between planners working at both levels, ensured that plans being undertaken at both scales were aligned. For example, two areas – the Aliwal Shoal and Tugela Bank – were identified as priorities in both the national and provincial plans, facilitating future implementation by influencing decisions regarding offshore mining proposals, as well as placement of marine protected areas as part of the national commitment to expanding them.

2.6. Capacity to engage with organizations and stakeholders operating at multiple levels

3. Discussion

Successful adaptive spatial planning necessitates continued interaction among stakeholders across multiple scales. Adaptive planning requires adjustments to plans as new information emerges at both local and regional scales. Regional-scale plans usually propose notional conservation areas that must, for many reasons, be adjusted for local implementation (Pressey et al., 2013). At the same time, locally motivated conservation actions will often require adjustment to better contribute to regional objectives (Grech et al., 2013). Planning across scales is time-consuming and costly, yet necessary (Pressey et al., 2013). Engaging at a regional scale allows for broader perspectives to be incorporated, for example on complementarity and connectivity between MPAs, and can legitimize planning and management (e.g. by the provision of legal support for communities to enforce management rules). Equally important, local engagement is essential to foster buy-in from managers and stakeholders (Andersson and Ostrom, 2008). Adaptive spatial planning therefore requires continued interaction with stakeholders at multiple levels of governance and multiple spatial scales (Morrison, 2007). Engagement of stakeholders at multiple levels allows for negotiation between national and local priorities. For example, the California trawl closures designated through national regulatory action resulted from a collaborative process, led by The Nature Conservancy and local fishermen. Partners agreed to jointly plan and petition for trawl closures coupled with TNC’s acquisition of permits and vessels from willing sellers who were ready to leave the fishery. Over 60% of the areas of biodiversity importance identified in a previous ecoregional assessment, undertaken at a broad scale for the northern Californian coast (ca. 110,000 km2), were included in the trawl closures. However, the process of combining regional biodiversity data with knowledge of local fishing, and negotiating solutions that met both conservation and economic goals, resulted in departures from the ecoregional plan, with the locally-informed plan covering only 60,000 km2, of which only 15,000 km2 were designated for trawl closures. Nevertheless, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, the regional management body composed of national and state agencies, coastal tribes, and stakeholders, voted unanimously to adopt the final proposed trawl closures (Lubell and Fulton, 2008). Multilevel governance structures can expedite learning and ensure alignment of planning processes occurring at different levels. In the Kubulau case study, a multilevel governance structure was fostered, with village and district management committees supported by partner NGOs and the national Fiji Locally Managed Marine Areas Network. This structure facilitated and expedited social learning about the system being managed (Weeks and

Adaptive spatial planning has been advocated because it allows decisions to be improved with accumulating knowledge, with management arrangements fine-tuned to fit a constantly changing social-ecological system (Gleason et al., 2013a). Yet, the extent to which adaptive spatial planning, distinct from project-scale adaptive management, has been applied in practice remains unclear. Few examples have been discussed in the scientific literature, although there is anecdotal evidence that adaptive spatial planning has been occurring across numerous case studies and in many parts of the world (e.g. through The Nature Conservancy’s Ecoregional Assessment and Conservation Action Planning Program). We examined five marine case studies to assess the extent to which the challenges presented by adaptive planning have been addressed. The case studies we examined differed in their social and ecological contexts and spatial extents (Table 2), and demonstrate different solutions to overcoming, or attempting to overcome, common challenges. Of the six challenges we examined, we highlight three that our case studies were unable to fully overcome. The first is explicitly recognizing the need and triggers for adaptation. While all case studies recognized the need for plans to be adapted, explicit identification of the specific conditions under which adaptation would be undertaken was absent in all cases. The other unmet challenges are the development of sufficient adaptive capacity to undertake ongoing and adaptive learning, and development of supportive institutional settings. Adaptation triggers determine when new adaptive planning cycles should begin. Triggers might consist of new information, altered social, economic, governance, or political contexts, revised objectives, or assessments of the effectiveness of implemented management actions (Grantham et al., 2009; Holness and Biggs, 2011; Kato and Ahern, 2008; Pressey et al., 2013). Like objectives for conservation planning, triggers for reviewing and revising a plan should be explicit and, if possible, quantitative (though this will not apply to all important social triggers), and linked to the social and ecological features or processes that are the concerns of the planning process. Careful understanding of the indicators that can be monitored to set off these triggers is therefore essential. Triggers activated in this way might exist in place of, or alongside, temporally-explicit triggers for revision (e.g. the established review intervals in the GBR, Central California and Kubulau). If desired outcomes from management actions are not observed within expected timeframes, plans might need to be reviewed and revised. An ecological trigger could relate, for example, to the population size of a targeted fish species in one or more MPAs. Changes to the management plan could then be triggered when populations, tracked over a sufficient period, either fail to increase,

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or decline below specified levels. An example of a social trigger could be a measure of well-being, following implementation of programs designed to halt adverse impacts of fishing closures on livelihoods of fishermen. Ecological and social thresholds that should inform triggers are a critical area for future research, with increasing relevance under a changing climate. Reeder and Ranger (Pressey et al., 2013) highlight several kinds of information needed to identify adaptation options: the key threshold at which consideration of alternative options would be required; the lead time needed to implement that option; and the estimated decision-point to trigger that implementation. They also suggest ‘‘route-maps’’ or adaptation pathways as a way forward for decisions on resource management under high uncertainty related to climate change (2011), an approach that could be useful in any context of high uncertainty. In the policy literature, Gunningham et al. (1998) (Reeder and Ranger, 2011) refer to these pathways as ‘‘sequencing’’ (e.g. voluntary agreements with industry to reduce water consumption which then escalate to legislated targets if industry does not deliver). An advantage of this approach, especially with limited knowledge about relevant thresholds, is that it allows people to embrace uncertainties and the need for adaptation that arise from dynamic social-ecological systems (Sayer et al., 2008). Another advantage is the consequent increased reliance of management decisions on learning. While all case studies had sufficient capacity and institutional support to commence adaptive planning processes, their continuation was uncertain. Some case-study projects depended on external donors and non-governmental bodies (e.g. Kubulau and Cebu), while others relied on political will (e.g. Great Barrier Reef), regulatory drivers that brought stakeholders together to revisit plans (e.g. Central California), or new government policies and priorities that changed the level of threat and perceived economic opportunity in the marine environment (e.g. South Africa’s national plan for expanding protected areas and the new Phakisa initiative). All of these elements of capacity and support for adaptation involve a high degree of uncertainty. Maintaining capacity and institutional support for ongoing adaptation can be costly in terms of financial resources and time, but is critical if the potential benefits of adaptive planning are to be realized. We believe the value of adaptation is still not fully understood by policy-makers and donors. Once it is, at least in the case of donors and organizations committed to sound environmental outcomes, more sustained resources will be allocated towards it. On the other hand, political processes are characterized by short-term perspectives and abandonment of programs that lack support by electorates. More widespread and sustained adaptive planning under the control of governments is therefore likely to need compelling cases by managers and scientists, ongoing stakeholder support, and legislated commitments during progressive political cycles. The need for continuous development of adaptive capacity and the importance of supportive institutional settings have been discussed previously by Pressey et al. (2013). While scientists can play a role in facilitating progress in these areas, for example through institutional and governance analysis, policy advocacy and stakeholder engagement (1998), the achievement of adequate adaptive capacity and institutional support relies on strong collaboration between scientists and those responsible for planning and highlevel commitment to planning outcomes. Science can inform change, but the required changes to funding priorities and the day-to-day workings of organizations depend ultimately on visionary leadership outside of the science domain. We conclude that, for the most part, the tools and understanding required to overcome the challenges of operationalizing adaptive spatial planning already exist; constraints limiting effective application are largely related to institutional and policy contexts

and planning cultures, which are subject to competing pressures and will need constant input from those who understand the importance of adaptation in planning. Another requirement is the development of evaluation systems for planning processes (e.g. Bottrill and Pressey, 2012) that would elucidate the advantages of adaptation relative to the ongoing investments required.

Acknowledgements We thank WWF-US for hosting us in 2010 and thank all those that participated in the discussion in the workshop at the WWFUS office in 2010, and the second a symposium at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, Canada, in May 2011. M.M., R.W. and R.L.P. acknowledge financial support from the Australian Research Council. A.T.L. and J.M.H. acknowledge financial support from the African Coelacanth Ecosystems Programme (ACEP) of the National Research Foundation, South Africa and The Pew Charitable Trust: Marine Conservation Fellows Program (J.M.H).

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