Trade offs can't be ignored! Assessing trade-offs in large marine protected areas

Tammy Davies (L) and Natalie Ban (R)

Researchers in the School of Environmental Studies have published on the social dimension to conservation action in PLOS One. Former Post Doctoral Fellow Tammy Davies  (photographed above, left), Dr. Natalie Ban (photographed above, right) and colleagues have found that an overlooked aspect to establishing large marine protected areas (MPA) is the trade offs inherent in doing so.

The researchers examined 12 large MPAs for social and ecological outcomes, and found evidence for three types of trade offs: "trade-offs between different ecological resources (supply trade-offs); trade-offs between ecological resource conditions and the well-being of resource users (supply-demand trade-offs); and trade-offs between the well-being outcomes of different resource users (demand trade-offs)."

Research funding was provided through the Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council of Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

For more information:

Davies TE, Epstein G, Aguilera SE, Brooks CM, Cox M, Evans LS, et al. (2018) Assessing trade-offs in large marine protected areas. PLoS ONE 13(4): e0195760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195760

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195760

Tammy Davies, tedavies23@gmail.com

Author, Alina Fisher