Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
INTRODUCTION
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are considered an essential tool for protection of coral reefs (Roberts et al., this volume). Indeed, protected areas are now seen as a key mechanism for achieving the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD)'s overall goal of a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. A global target has therefore been set requiring ‘at least 10% of the world's ecological regions effectively conserved’, with representative protected area systems established by 2010. Recognizing that MPAs are lagging behind terrestrial protected areas, the deadline for the establishment of representative protected area systems in the marine environment has been extended to 2012.
While there has been a great deal of enthusiasm for the establishment of MPAs with coral reefs around the world, it has often proven easier to set them up than to manage them successfully. As emphasized in many chapters in this book, monitoring and assessment of conservation actions are essential and can lead to greatly improved management. Effectiveness of performance, and accountability, are increasingly demanded across all sectors of society and conservation is no exception (Margoluis and Salafsky, 1998). Indeed, the CBD recommends that appropriate methods, standards, criteria and indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of protected area management and governance should be developed and adopted by 2008, and 30% of protected areas ‘assessed’ in each country by 2010. Monitoring the effectiveness of protected areas has therefore acquired some urgency and many methods are being developed and tested at present.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.