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Interpretations of MPA winners and losers: a case study of the Cabo De Palos- Islas Hormigas Fisheries Reserve

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Abstract

There is a controversy in the literature on marine protected areas (MPAs) over the way their outcomes are portrayed in terms of winners and losers. On the one hand, many analysts have portrayed MPAs as win-win solutions, resulting in both increased biodiversity and improved livelihoods. On the other hand, some analysts have argued that win-win outcomes are mythical, and in practice, MPAs invariably result in trade-offs between ecological and economic objectives. This study seeks to test which of these two hypotheses fits the Cabo de Palos Islas Hormigas marine protected area (CPH-MPA) in southeast Spain. However, it does so not by analysing directly the tension between the two objectives of ecological and economic goals, but by analysing the tensions between four groups of stakeholders—fishers, divers, community residents, and administrators—which map on to the tension between the two goals. The study is based on 111 interviews of key informants conducted in 2013–2014 to discover the perceptions of stakeholders on the issue of who are the winners and who are the losers as a result of the MPA. The main findings of this study on the CPH-MPA are that winning and losing are very complex and ambiguous categories; that there is no objective way of determining who are winners or losers; that the situation of winners and losers is due to human intervention rather than a natural and inevitable process; that win-win outcomes are implausible because trade-offs between wins and losses are inevitable; and that political authorities have to decide who will be the winners and who will be the losers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment; Ministry of Agriculture and Water of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia; related experts, marine resource users, and community members of Cabo de Palos- Islas Hormigas Marine Reserve for their collaboration. Special thanks go to Irene Rojo Moreno, Samantha Cámara Blas, Sergio Parra San Llorente, Miguel Lorenzi, and Antonio Calò for their assistance with interviews, and transcription, and Carlos Cegarra for translation.

Funding

This study was funded by the FP7 – People - Marie Curie Actions – Initial Training Network for Monitoring Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (ITN-MMMPA) project, Contract no. 290056. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, preparation of the manuscript, or decision to publish.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de Murcia, 30100, Murcia, Spain

    Katie Hogg, Pedro Noguera-Méndez, María Semitiel-García & Sarah Young

  2. School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

    Tim Gray

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Contributions

KH was the principal researcher. KH and TG were the lead authors. KH, MS, and PN were responsible for structuring the research and its methodology, SY and TG contributed further by aiding data analysis and interpreting outcomes. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katie Hogg.

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Ethics statement

Permission to conduct this study was granted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Environment in Spain, and ethics approval was obtained through submission of an ethics assessment to the University of Murcia Ethical Committee. Participants were informed of the aims of the project, how data would be used, and how they could access the study results. Researchers obtained oral consent from participants before conducting interviews. Personal identifying information was replaced with respondent ID numbers to ensure anonymity.

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Hogg, K., Gray, T., Noguera-Méndez, P. et al. Interpretations of MPA winners and losers: a case study of the Cabo De Palos- Islas Hormigas Fisheries Reserve. Maritime Studies 18, 159–171 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-019-00134-5

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