Establishing marine protected areas in Sweden: Internal resistance versus global influence

Abstract

In the past decade, marine protected areas (MPAs) have become an increasingly used tool for science-based conservation and adaptive management of marine biodiversity and related natural resources. In this review paper, we report on rather complete time-course series (55 years uninterrupted) focusing on comparison of the strong difference, in number and area, in establishing marine (56 MNRs) and terrestrial (4284 TNRs) nature reserves in Sweden versus marine (7001 MPAs) and terrestrial (132742 TPAs) protected areas globally. Sweden appears to follow the overall global time trends. The large backlog of MPAs in relation to TPAs is due to several possible reasons, such as (i) unclear marine jurisdiction, (ii) marine conservation policies and programs developed later than terrestrial, (iii) higher costs for marine conservation management, (iv) conflicts in marine conservation, especially the fishery, and (v) the general public's historically weak awareness of the status of the marine environment.