Ocean Zoning with Stakeholders for Tun Mustapha Park in Sabah, Malaysia
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From Marxan to management: ocean zoning with stakeholders for Tun Mustapha Park in Sabah, Malaysia R OBECCA J UMIN,AUGUSTINE B INSON,JENNIFER M C G OWAN,SIKULA M AGUPIN M ARIA B EGER,CHRISTOPHER J. BROWN,HUGH P. POSSINGHAM and C ARISSA K LEIN Abstract Tun Mustapha Park, in Sabah, Malaysia, was ga- many other places embark on similar zoning processes on zetted in May and is the first multiple-use park in land and in the sea. Malaysia where conservation, sustainable resource use and Keywords Biodiversity, Coral Triangle Initiative, marine development co-occur within one management framework. protected area, Marxan, representation, sustainable resource We applied a systematic conservation planning tool, use, systematic conservation planning, zoning Marxan with Zones, and stakeholder consultation to design and revise the draft zoning plan. This process was facilitated Supplementary material for this article can be found at by Sabah Parks, a government agency, and WWF-Malaysia, https://doi.org/./S under the guidance of the Tun Mustapha Park steering com- mittee and with support from the University of Queensland. Four conservation and fishing zones, including no-take Introduction areas, were developed, each with representation and replica- tion targets for key marine habitats, and a range of socio- arine ecosystems are threatened by human activities economic and community objectives. Here we report on Mon land and in the sea (Halpern et al., ). Coupled how decision-support tools informed the reserve design with growing human populations and economies, the main process in three planning stages: prioritization, government threats include overfishing (Jackson et al., ; Lotze et al., review, and community consultation. Using marine habitat ; Worm et al., , ), pollution (Vitousek et al., and species representation as a reporting metric, we describe ; Syvitski et al., ), and habitat modification and deg- how the zoning plan changed at each stage of the design pro- radation (Halpern et al., , ; Burke et al., ). cess. We found that the changes made to the zoning plan by Furthermore, climate change affects marine ecosystems the government and stakeholders resulted in plans that through changes in sea level, aragonite concentrations, compromised the achievement of conservation targets be- and temperature (Jackson et al., ; Hughes et al., ; cause no-take areas were moved away from villages and Hoegh-Guldberg et al., ). Marine protected areas are the coastline, where unique habitats are located. The design a key regional initiative that can help conserve marine bio- process highlights a number of lessons learned for future diversity and sustain coastal resources (Gaines et al., ; conservation zoning, which we believe will be useful as Hughes et al., ; Mumby & Harborne, ; Edgar et al., ). Given the growing threat to marine ecosystems, there is ROBECCA JUMIn* (Corresponding author) Borneo Marine Research Institute, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia an increasing incentive to establish marine protected areas; E-mail [email protected] for example, the Convention on Biological Diversity aims to AUGUSTINE BINSON Sabah Parks, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia represent % of marine habitats in protected areas by JENNIFER MCGOWAN and MARIA BEGER Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation (Convention on Biological Diversity, ). As protected Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia areas often constrain resource users such as fishers, estab- SIKULA MAGUPIN WWF-Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia lishing various types of zones can accommodate multiple CHRISTOPHER J. BROWN† The Global Change Institute, The University of conflicting and incompatible uses of the ocean (Crowder Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia et al., ; Yates et al., ). Ocean zoning thus aims to HUGH P. POSSINGHAM The Nature Conservancy, South Brisbane, Queensland, regulate activities in time and space to achieve specific ob- Australia, and The Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The jectives for industries and biodiversity (Agardy, ). University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia Many approaches have been used to design zoning plans, CARISSA KLEIN The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia, and School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Management, from stakeholder- to software-driven processes. For ex- Brisbane, Queensland, Australia ample, stakeholder groups were responsible for developing *Also at: WWF-Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia † networks of coastal marine protected areas in California Current address: Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia (Klein et al., ; Gleason et al., ), and a national mar- Received February . Revision requested August . ine conservation strategy in the Marshall Islands (Baker Accepted November . First published online May . et al., ). In Papua New Guinea (Green et al., ), Oryx, 2018, 52(4), 775–786 © 2017 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605316001514 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 52.0.234.91, on 24 Jan 2020 at 01:04:49, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605316001514 776 R. Jumin et al. Australia (Fernandes et al., ) and Indonesia (Grantham including dugongs Dugong dugon, otters Lutra perspicillata, et al., ), spatial planning software was used to identify humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae, and marine tur- priority areas for multiple human activities and biodiversity. tles (Chelonia mydas, Eretmochelys imbricata, Lepidochelys Ideally, decision makers would utilize both stakeholder olivacea; Dumaup et al., ). The Park is home to input and spatial planning software to identify zone place- . , people living in three administrative districts ments to meet conservation and socio-economic objectives (Kudat, Pitas, Kota Marudu; Supplementary Fig. S), almost (Game et al., ). However, there is limited guidance on half of which depend on marine resources for their liveli- how best to integrate these approaches to design a zoning hood and well-being (Department of Statistics Malaysia, plan for multiple uses. Few examples in the literature de- ; PE Research, ). Fishing is a primary economic ac- scribe the challenges and opportunities associated with inte- tivity in the region, and contributed % of total marine grated approaches. Accessing lessons learnt from projects fisheries production in Sabah in (PE Research, ). that pioneered such approaches remains a challenge. As Although trawl and purse seine fisheries are the largest fish- an increasing number of nations embark on ocean zoning eries in the region, the live reef fish trade, long-line and processes to conserve biodiversity and manage increasing small-scale artisanal fisheries are significant for local liveli- economic activity, such guidance is required urgently to hoods. Habitats and marine life are thus threatened by a support effective decisions. suite of human activities, including overfishing, destructive Here we describe the approach used to develop a zoning fishing, unsustainable coastal land uses, and illegal harvest- plan for Tun Mustapha Park in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, ing of marine turtles and eggs (Jumin et al., ). in which the planning tool Marxan with Zones (Watts We categorized the Park into four ecological regions, based et al., ) was integrated with stakeholder consultation. on geographical location, ocean currents and wind regimes Stakeholders included representatives from the government, that influence the development of coral reef ecosystems, academia, NGOs, and community members affected by the and report our results according to these regions (Fig. ). Park. One of the primary objectives of the plan was to meet The planning area is . million ha, which includes areas basic representation targets for key marine habitats and spe- three nautical miles (. km) from the mainland and two cies within the Park. We show how the representation of key nautical miles (. km) from the islands within the Park. marine habitats and species changed in each of three stages We excluded an area of c. ha adjacent to Kudat Town be- of the design process, as well as how evenly habitats and spe- cause of heavy degradation and industrial development, in- cies are represented across each zone. We believe that les- cluding regional port and ferry terminals, and a landing jetty. sons learned from our experience can guide decisions about how to zone for conservation and human uses else- where. In particular, we believe this study will be useful Methods across the Coral Triangle, where an increasing number of zoning plans are underway, as the policy context and data Zoning process limitations are similar. In the Sabah State Government approved the intention to gazette and zone the area for multiple uses, including Study area conservation and fishing. The Sabah State Government has three objectives for Tun Mustapha Park: () eradicate Tun Mustapha Park is located in the northern region of poverty, () develop economic activities that are environ- Sabah. Prior to gazettement the region had no effective for- mentally sustainable, and () conserve habitats and threa- mal natural resource management plans, and laws regulat- tened species. In an Interim Steering Committee ing its resource use were not fully enforced. To address this (henceforth the Committee) was established to manage the Sabah Government approved,