Incorporating sense of place into the management of marine protected areas: A case study from new South Wales, Australia

Marine social-ecological systems are experiencing rapid changes across the globe due to a range of threats such as climate change and exploitation (e.g. overfishing). Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are one tool to support the sustainable management of marine systems and resources, however, they are often implemented with mixed success, with one of the key critiques being a lack of consideration of social dimensions. To address this, there have been increased calls for greater consideration of a broad range of social factors, alongside environmental factors in the planning and management of MPAs. One phenomenon that stands to greatly inform and influence the success of MPA management is Sense of Place (SoP), that is, an individual or groups' emotional bond with a given place. While the importance and relevance of SoP is beginning to be acknowledged in the environmental academic literature, there are no documented examples of the phenomenon being incorporated into marine policy or management in a meaningful way. This study seeks to explore why this is the case and how it may be addressed. We achieve this through a case study approach, conducting in depth interviews with decision-makers involved in the management of the New South Wales Marine Estate (i.e. MPA managers), exploring i) their understanding of SoP, ii) their experience in incorporating it into policy, iii) the barriers and iv) enablers in doing so. Results show that despite a limited understanding of SoP, most participants do consider it to be important for marine policy and management and many have attempted to include it in their management efforts, although these attempts are largely centred around general consideration of social values and including diverse voices in policy discussion, as opposed to direct inclusion of SoP per se. A broad range of barriers to incorporating SoP into MPA management were also identified with political barriers, the ambiguity of the concept and challenges in having social values ‘win out’ against economic realities being the most common. Enablers were less commonly identified by study participants, and included the use of SoP as a tool or boundary object to develop shared understandings between stakeholders. We conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on how to improve the incorporation of SoP into MPA management, and outline how this may be achieved through the study of bright spots.