Overcoming challenges and identifying opportunities for marine conservation planning: lessons from Brazil

While the establishment of new marine protected areas (MPAs) is rife with increased social tensions and political conflicts, their planning process can lead to increased levels of participation, representing potential opportunities for enactment. Here we revised government reports related to 60 MPA proposals spanning nearly three decades along the Brazilian coast to examine the context in which challenges and opportunities to MPA establishment arise. To add nuance and more diverse voices to this evaluation, we also included the perspectives of social actors directly engaged with four MPA proposals. Results highlight that lack of institutional capacity, particularly administrative matters, consistently affected the development of MPAs. The inclusion of social actors’ perspectives revealed a cautious view of the MPA planning process, increasing the strength of the challenges identified such as the lack of political will. While MPA proposals of strict protection tended to have a more diverse set of challenges, such as a spatial configuration considered inadequate by social actors, the ones of sustainable use tended to have more conservation opportunities, such as increased local perception of MPA benefits. Together, these results provide quantitative evidence of concurrent challenges and opportunities associated with proposed MPAs, highlighting improved ways of performing MPA planning globally.