WHAT IS AN EFFECTIVE MPA MANAGEMENT ?
HOW WE SHOULD DO IT ?
ecology foundation/02-27-2022
Hi Ecology Friends!
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Indonesia has been progressing well in establishing marine protected areas. After achieving the 2020 target of 20 million hectare MPAs, Indonesia now is pursuing a new target of 30 million hectare MPAs by 2030. It means Indonesia is enlarging the coverage of managed marine waters with special purposes, i.e. protecting critical habitats to marine lives, ensuring sustainability of fish resources, and, please we should not forget, promoting sustainable socio-economic benefits of MPAs to local communities. Here, Bintan MPA with the existing of Anambas MPA are two signficant contributions of KEPRI communities who are the stakeholders of the marine areas in KEPRI Province. Additional MPAs in the KEPRI will certainly be important to the achievement of the 2030 national target of MPA.
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After official declaration of its establishment by the MMAF, each MPA must be managed effectively to achieve the objective of its establishment. Let's interprete the words of managed effectively in a common sense, i.e. the management of MPA must be successful in improving the status of the problems being addressed by implementing a number of well designed management stategies or approaches. You can find the expected outcomes of the MPA management from the objective statements stated in the MPA management plan.
Dr M. Fedi A. Sondita, MSc
IPB University
The MPA management must employ skillfull staffs and accommodate stakeholders participation in the implementation of MPA management plan. Therefore, capacity building is a compulsory program and must be included in the management plan. Why? Because MPA staffs and the stakeholders must be prepared to participate actively in MPA management process. In the case of Bintan MPA, the two workshops of MPA management plan held in September and November 2021 are two examples of capacity building approaches.
In addition to the capacity building program, monitoring and evaluation of MPA management indicators must be carried out properly. The M&E program is the only way that allow us to measure the progress of MPA management and to identify any constraint and driving force of management progress towards management objective achievements. A sound M&E program must be developed according to the objectives and strategies described in the management plan. Since a cost effective M&E scheme for Bintan is needed, the stakeholders of Bintan MPA are also expected to be capable in conducting a portion of M&E programs with supervision from the MPA staffs. These stakeholders are not limited to academicians, researchers or NGO staffs, but also community members who are physically and/or emotionally very close to the resources being managed.
Looking forward to interact with you soon.