, 2012),

and MSP can incorporate both these uses of coastal waters while adjudicating the access conflicts between them and other legitimate uses of the coastal seas (Lorenzen et al., 2010b and Agardy et al., 2012). Beyond addressing food security challenges, MSP can be expected to help address the issues faced by managers of tropical coastal waters in several ways (Agardy, 2010): • Protecting ecologically critical areas to allow healthy ecosystem function. As stated previously, selleck chemicals MPAs can successfully protect biodiversity and maintain or enhance productivity, including fisheries productivity. However, the odds are diminishing that all essential conditions for effective MPA management will be met because pressures are intensifying as populations and their associated demand for resources increase (Edgar et al., 2014). Furthermore, planners are tending to retreat from efforts to manage heavily used areas because of the complexity inherent in reconciling multiple uses and indirect impacts. MPAs alone will not prevent massive degradation of tropical seas. Ecologically critical areas can however be protected within the matrix of management and regulations that flow from MSP and ocean zoning. Localized and regional assessments can harness science to quickly and efficiently Pifithrin-�� price identify habitats delivering important ecosystem services, including

services that regulate and support broader environmental health and allow reefs and associated ecosystems to continue to deliver much-needed fisheries, energy, materials, and

other goods into the future (Tallis et al., 2010). In a zoning plan Teicoplanin that flows out of a comprehensive, participatory MSP process, these critical nodes can be designated as redline areas, to be protected as strictly as appropriate. An important argument for spatial planning arises from the growing extent and diversity of ocean uses: large and small-scale fishing, aquaculture, shipping, wind and wave power, minerals extraction, recreation, and conservation. Many of these uses and interests are inherently incompatible. MSP, and the ocean zoning that emerges from it, provides a means of reducing use and interest conflicts as well as rationalizing the areas over which uses can occur while creating opportunities for establishment of rights-based incentives for sustainable use. Separating and rationalizing allocation of space will create a set of localized goods and services and define the users more explicitly (Sanchirico et al., 2010 and Tallis et al., 2010). MSP involves the demarcation of areas and may impose boundaries around resources and those entitled to use them. Such boundaries allow development of management policies based on the allocation of exclusive rights to individuals or groups, and use of appropriate management tools for achieving sustainability.