Responsibilities
I will support the Marine Governance Team:
Sustainability targets in Marine Protected Area (MPA) governance tend to focus on ecological dimensions. Whilst there is increasing attention to social impacts on local communities, a paradox arises, central to the concept of sustainability (and sustainable planning), whereby attention is often paid to the future – how to protect for generations to come – at the cost of thinking of current ones.
Focusing on MPAs located in the Canary Islands, this project investigates how time and temporality affects local participation in MPA processes and senses of ownership. It explores in what way residents feel connected (or not) to discourses that emphasize future benefits, and the role of the past in shaping current frameworks. Essential subgoals, which feed into the described research are to understand what makes an MPA successful for different stakeholders – and when – and which factors lead to a sense of ownership for local fishing communities throughout the MPA implementation and development.