Enhancing the Legacy of California's Marine Protected Areas through Bottom-Up Collaboration

Abstract

California enacted the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999 to create a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the California coast. Through an eight-year process that engaged stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers, 124 MPAs were designated. During implementation, a network of county level collaboratives was formed to ensure that MPA management continued the bottom-up engagement of a diverse set of stakeholders. These collaboratives, and the Collaborative Network that supports them, have been an integral part of MPA management ever since 2012. The Collaborative Network is an ongoing experiment in collaborative governance and has been recognized as a key element in management of the MPAs. Our project analyzes the fourteen collaboratives, the Collaborative Network, and the relationships between the collaboratives, the Collaborative Network, and the State in an attempt to delineate the benefits and challenges of this arrangement, and identify best practices of collaborative governance. Interviews with members of the collaboratives and with stakeholders inform case studies of each collaborative. A cross-case analysis allowed us to identify key lessons that can be disseminated to other organizations attempting similar effort