Avoiding “Paper Parks”: A Global Literature Review on Socioeconomic Factors Underpinning the Effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas
Jianye Tang
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
My questions regarding the authors concerns how they have chosen the papers with regards to reviewing these papers. It seems it does not really represent the other developing nations or their MPAs as most of those chosen works were those found in Europe and North America. While we admire that they included high impact factor publications, even the use of such criteria affects the distribution of articles to be included in this review. I suggest that the authors should try to find other papers that could balance this out such as those in Latin America, e.g. Mexico, Brazil or even Argentina as well as those in Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia. I think the efforts of the authors to cover the world over is understandable, but it misses out in terms of representing the efforts of other smaller nations or nations just beginning to grasp or have an understanding regarding the use of MPAs in their nations. I am suggesting that to balance this review, the authors should include publications coming out or referring to these nations efforts also to manage their MPAs that will avoid a paper parks syndrome. I noticed that just because those papers selected for these review are published in high impact factor journals, it misses out on representing or balancing these ideas with what is also found in other areas such as what I have already mentioned above. So how do the authors try to avoid such biases as this is highly skewed towards the developed nations when in fact the bulk of the problems regarding MPAs are found in developing and poor nations, including Africa?
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
General comment
Studying effectiveness of MPAs is very crucial. It is important to create MPAs, but it is even more important that these MPAs can achieve their objectives. MPAs must have an impact on the socio-economic level. In view of all this, I find this work very interesting. I hope that the interesting results of this work will serve MPA managers.
As far as the introduction is concerned, the problem of the effectiveness of MPAs was well stated. The authors first discussed the global situation of marine biodiversity loss due to overfishing and the effects of climate change and the need to create MPAs for the conservation of marine biodiversity and habitats.
They noted that public acceptance of MPAs and compliance with established rules are key to the success of MPAs. Furthermore, the criteria for selecting MPAs for this study are very objective. The focus is on socio-economic efficiency.
The methodology used is good for me.
The results are reliable since they were obtained on MPAs that were chosen according to a very objective selection criterion. The results highlighted the most important socio-economic strategies to support the effectiveness of MPAs. In this part, I just ask the authors to check the numbering of the figures
What is important to remember in the discussion is that the stakeholders emphasised the active participation of fishermen in the aim of the MPAs. The strategies for ensuring the effectiveness of MPAs are known through this work. The question of stakeholder adherence to strategies opens up other research perspectives and an in-depth analysis of socio-economic and governance indicators.
In the conclusion, the authors point out the important role of stakeholders in the creation and management of MPAs. These stakeholders are considered here as the essential components of MPA effectiveness.
All in all, this article is well written and has given a lot of information on the problems related to the effectiveness of MPAs and then the importance of stakeholders in the creation of MPAs.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Since the term “paper park,” first defined in a 1999 WWF-World Bank report, refers to “a legally established protected area where experts believe current protection activities are insufficient to halt degradation”, there have been several attempts to investigate the effectiveness of MAPs to generate intended multiple benefits. As there is a wide array of opinions about the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of establishment of MPAs as a common management approach for protecting relevant habitats and the stocks that depend on them, this review is a timely exercise to provide a holistic view on the subject.
The methodology applied for retrieving, reviewing, and analyzing literature is scientifically sound. The paper is well-executed and well-written.
The review clearly unveiled the directions to be followed to enhance MPA effectiveness. The need for prioritizing the involvement of stakeholders in MPA design, implementation, and management, as well as improving communication channels between management authorities and stakeholders is clearly evident from this review.
I, therefore, consider this an important review on the subject, which will be beneficial to many readers in the international audience.
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
The Manuscript-Avoiding “paper parks”: a global literature review on the socio-economic strategies to enhance the effectiveness of marine protected areas-intends to identify key elements crucial to the success of MPAs by using a global literature review method. The intention matches great well with the current great debate over the establishment and effectiveness of MPAs. The bibliographies selected and included therein offers a good reference for readers who are following this interesting topic.
However, the manuscript fell short of providing meaningful insights to the issue of MPAs in addition to the excise of data collection and analysis, just as Line 414 admitted that ‘this research represents by no means the real conditions of global MPAs.’
First and foremost, the conclusions of this work, 13 main groups of strategies, are so generic that most of them, if not all, could also be said for measures other than MPAs. For instance, these identified strategies are essential to effective fisheries management as well.
Second, should the fourth Section of the manuscript, the Discussion Section starting from Line 293, have explained the role of each strategy in the context specific cases which are selected from reviewed literatures, it would be useful to explore the specific role or function of the strategies.
Third, the method adopted by the authors determined to some extent the results, in which the strategy of stakeholder inclusion ranks first. Lines 161 and 227 clearly point out that a large number studies reviewed by this manuscript based on interviews. In other words, these studies collected data about stakeholders. As consequence, the strategy of stakeholders came out as the first priority. Moreover, the manuscript failed to analyze the categories of stakeholders and the interaction between or among different categories of stakeholders. Mention is only made of fishers or fishing communities. However, in a general context of MPAs, possible stakeholders could include, inter alia, shipping industries, oil and gas industries, wind farm, land-based pollution emitters, and aquiculture or mariculture industries in addition to fishers or fishing communities.
Fourth, the manuscript did not explain how many failed and successful cases it reviewed, since Lines 78-80 suggesting that more than 70% MPAs failed to achieved their goals. Of these reviewed cases, the manuscript also did not clarify how many cases took place in areas under national jurisdiction and how many case in areas beyond national jurisdiction. MPAs designed in areas beyond national jurisdiction are usually larger in size and located in remoted areas. The strategies for this kind of MPAs should differ to some extent from those for MPAs in areas under national jurisdiction. If there are no MPAs in areas beyond national jurisdiction reviewed, there needs some language for clarification in someplace appropriate.
In addition to the above general comments, here are some specific comments for consideration.
1. the term of the social-economical strategies used throughout of this manuscript seems somehow misleading. By reading the whole manuscript, the identified 13 groups of ‘strategies’ are more of elements since the word of ‘strategy’ means a general plan comprising the use of all relevant elements in different stages.
2. the sentence between Lines 15-16, ‘Despite the number of MPAs is rapidly increasing worldwide, these often achieve their objectives only partially’, sounds like to be a conclusion of this manuscript. If this is not the case, changes in respect to the wording are needed.
3. Line 39 identifies overfishing as the only cause to the loss of marine habitats and fish stocks. No mention is made of other causes in addition to climate change. This is apparently inconsistent with the findings of 2019 IPBES Report. Moreover, unstainable fishing includes inter alia IUU fishing and destructive fishing in addition to overfishing.
4. the second word ‘mine’ in Line 72 might be an error. Replacing it with ‘undermine’ sounds reasonable.
5. Lines 45-49 indicate that the manuscript excluded all articles dealing with biological or ecological features. This exercise led to excluding most papers out of 715 research items. The manuscript provided no explanation on this exclusion and did not explore potential impacts of this exclusion on the results. Notwithstanding, the Discussion Section should put back these biological or ecological features in order to discuss social-economical strategies in a broader context or in a context close to a real situation.
6. Lines 172-176 mention that the review includes some non-MPA case-studies. These non-MPA cases look like those of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM), different from MPAs. The manuscript did not explain how many such non-MPA cases were included. Given there are only 74 literature items reviewed, the absence of the number of non-MPA cases presents difficulties to assess the impacts of mixing OECMs with MPAs on the findings of this review process.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I think the paper is much better now, and at least you have clarified the differences of how you earlier portrayed the various published studies regarding MPA and their locations around the globe. I just have a minor question, given that these 13 group of factors revealed by the study, can we actually make use of these 13 groups of factors and see if they are relevant in the local or regional context of our study areas (which is outside Europe) to assess the effectiveness of our existing MPAs? You did not advice how the results of this study should be utilized in the conclusion part, you only mention about its significance in Europe.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors took the review comments seriously and they made necessary changes to the manuscript. The changes are constructive and helpful. Whereas there are comments unsettled and the authors are of the view that the unsettled comments are out of the scope of this manuscript, the revised manuscript is acceptable in a general sense.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, many thanks for your comment and the time dedicated to our study.
