Gouvernance des aires marines protégées pour la gestion durable de la biodiversité et des usages côtiers – GAIUS

For the states, the sustainable management of marine and coastal ecosystems constitute a relevant strategy of their environmental and development public policies. The coastal areas represents only 4% of the planet lands, but they concentrate more than one-third of the world population, and they suffer from increasing demographics and economics constraints. Facing these changes, the regulation of man-nature intractions become imperious. These interactions are realized through many uses, wich affect directly or indirectly the environment et the natural resources. Firstly, professional activities, like fisheries or tourism, produce trading goods and services, directly coming from the ecosystem. Secondly, non-trading considerations induce other uses, declined in terms of values and representations, like the human wellbeing or the conservation of natural and cultural patrimony. These situations generate many various pressure on the environment and create a risk of biodiversity loss. Environmental risk force the States and the politics leaders to decide on effective measures for management and protection. With this aim, the use of marine protected areas (MPA) represent a legal and institutional relevant mean to guarantee the sustainibility of the ecosystems and their using. France have just pass a new legal frame (the Law on marine national parcs from the 14th of april 2006), allowing her to start a convincing and ambitious national polititic on MPA. The World Summit on sustainable development (Johannesburg 2002) reaffirmed the role of MPA in biodiversity conservation, setting the objective for protecting 20% to 30% of marine surface on the horizon 2012. Nevertheless, in costals regions undergoing a transformation and places of intense socio-economics stakes, the increase of the number and the size of MPA pose several questions. Had being MPA conceived to resist or to adapt effectively to these mutations ? In wich step are they factors of competition and conflicts of using ? Are the retained institutional and legal frames, and their recent evolutions, liable to assure a well-governance of existing or foreseen MPA ? How reconsider MPA and their regulation, in order to reach their aim, that is biodiversity conservation, sustainable management of fisheries and local patrimony and the measured development of recreatives and touristics activities ? These previous questions base the problematic of the GAIUS project and will be processed from case studies sites in different ecologics, economics, legal and politics context. With institutional and legal data, as well as complementary investigations in situ, we will propose a typology of MPA governance, put in touch with efficency of their management systems. These documented analyse will permit to work out a globlal thought about the notion of administration and well-governance of MPA. In order to evaluate MPA management politicies, in relation to the objectives assigned as far as conservation and sustainable using of fisheries resources, we will collect and analyze a set of data relating to ecological biodiversity of the identified sites. Also, we will realized investigations to the users to highlight how the existence of MPA affect positively or negatively, their presence (admittance) and their use of spaces/resources. From this two type of analyze, we will construct indicators to draw up some diagnosis in comparison to the management objectives expounded here before. A narrow collaboration with the managers of MPA will be favoured, to decline more precisely the components of management politics and to define appropriated indicators, likely to improve the decision process. The GAIUS project make an effort to put the analyze of the governance and the decision taking, in relation with ecologics, economics and social indicators wich will be produce. We will manage and improve a collective and multidisciplinary thought about contribution of MPA to sustainable management of costals ecosystems and their uses. The multidisciplinary approach will imply the intervention of law, economy and ecology researchers. The participants will use some modelization tools on a broad sense, suitable for their discipline and research methodology : administrative, socio-economics and halieutics investigations, reading listings, indicators, multi-criteria analyze, mathematics models. In addition, the consortium will integrate in his approach, some scientifics and managers of MPA, as well as the stakeholders and the organizations presents on these spaces. In fine, the GAIUS project will contribute in a conceptual way to the problematic of sustainable management of coastal ecosystems and their use, and to bring concrete elements to the actually question about promoting marine natural parcs in France and more generally the development of MPA in Europe and on the world.