Economic Models of Marine Protected Areas: an Introduction

This paper aims to achieve two goals. First, it provides an overview of marine protected areas (MPAs) a concept that is attracting widespread attention worldwide and the role of economic analysis and modeling in designing, implementing and evaluating such marine protected areas. Several major considerations to be taken into account in economic modeling of MPAs are also discussed. Second, the paper serves as an introduction to a pair of special issues of the journal, Natural Resource Modeling, Vol. 15, Nos. 3 and 4, 2002, containing a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on the Economics of Marine Protected Areas held July 6 7, 2000, in Vancouver, Canada. The conference provided a first opportunity for academic, government and private sector actors to share ideas, information and models relating to the economic analysis of Marine Protected Areas, as tools in fishery management and marine ecosystem conservation. These special issues follow along similar lines, providing, apparently for the first time within an international journal setting, a comprehensive focus on the economics of MPAs.