Developing a marine protected area network with multiple objectives in China

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is an efficient tool to design marine protected area (MPA) networks. Although China has decades of experience in developing MPAs, its current MPA designs are limited to small spatial scales and are infrequently supported by a systematic planning approach. As one of few studies to incorporate biological and socio-economic information in marine conservation prioritization in China, this study, targeting Haizhou Bay in China, provides a range of MPA network alternatives and evaluates the current design for four scenarios with different objectives. This corresponds to the major challenges for China's MPAs: conserve biodiversity; protect ecologically and economically important species; minimize socio-economic costs; and reduce enforcement costs. Furthermore, this study considers the compatibility of aquaculture practices, economically critical to China's coastal regions, in MPA designs and implementations. This study determines that current MPA designs are inadequate to meet conservation objectives. For instance, existing MPAs cover less than 10% of the ranges of target species for conservation. There are substantial conservation gaps offshore. By constructing and analysing planning scenarios, this study demonstrates the trade-offs in objectives as well as the importance of implementing SCP in China's MPA network design. Lessons learned from this study are also applicable to multi-objective conservation prioritization in other countries.