*4.3.2 To raise awareness, impose sanctions, establish dialogue and negotiate … how regulations are really used*

The MPAs studied in Greece, Colombia and France are consolidated and dispose of a specific legal framework and monitoring means at sea. However, all these case studies converge in two observations: everywhere, sanctions are rare, and the regulation is first and foremost a medium for dialogue.

In France, in one of the central zones of the Port Cros National Park, it has emerged from a specific study [40] that while 9,800 infractions were observed from 2010 to 2018 (offshore in 45% of cases), 97.3% of these infractions led only to verbal warnings and sanctions were applied in only 2.1% of cases: the regulation is primarily a medium for information and raising awareness, and it is mentioned in each annual activity report from 2010 to 2016 that the National Park's policy is to "favour information and awareness raising over sanctions".6

In Greece, in the case of the National Marine Park of Zakynthos (NMPZ), an observation survey enabled us to confirm the non-respect of mooring regulations, turtle observation distances and offshore speed limits, despite the fact that the NMPZ ensures that other regulations are respected, particularly those concerning the no-go zone. The massification of "3S" (Sea, Sand and Sun) tourism requiring recreational activities in the very same location as conservation issues has made it necessary to draw up regulations to share the area, and the NMPZ is managing to ensure these are respected: however, faced with the boom in demand, operators are showing an inventiveness that quickly renders obsolete the rules defined at any given moment. Henceforth, the manager chooses regulations on which he concentrates his inspections, while using the entire set of rules, respected or otherwise,

<sup>6</sup> PNPC Activity Reports (2010, p.15; 2011, p.17; 2012 p.22; 2015, p.16; 2016, p.14).

*Measuring Marine Protected Areas' Conservation Effort: A Different Look at Three… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98933*

as a negotiating tool to prevent the most serious infringements. Some regulations become part of a transactional game. When the NMPZ renounced enforcing a rule to prohibit mooring in a zone because of lack of means but also of alternatives to offer (it hoped to build a mooring platform but did not have the funds to employ the staff needed to run it), it was in order to focus on other offences and ensure the enforcement of regulations prohibiting access to crucial nesting areas. Certain transactions are more-or-less explicit, such as with professional fishing, where for ten years, a status quo was respected, and described as such by the protagonists: the respect of regulations concerning zoning in return for the lack of new restrictions. Dialogue recently began to change this status quo: the regulations are used as a medium for dialogue.

In Colombia, the Rosario and San Bernardo Corals National Natural Park (RSBCNNP) is also besieged by tourism described by its manager as "overwhelming", with 1,300,000 visitors a year. Here, again, observation reveals that the PNN tacitly selects regulations that it enforces, renouncing others that are used as a negotiating tool. Admittedly, this is due to a lack of inspection means for the classified perimeter (despite 55 officials and the involvement of the national navy) but also, as in Greece, due to the marketing of a very attractive natural landscape that stimulates the emergence of new uses, creating uncontrollable situations.7 Lastly, from the point of view of the inhabitants, an excess of regulations are applied to some uses. Too many prohibitions without alternatives kill the prohibition, according to a representative of the Afro-descendant community and for whom, "as it is forbidden to fish both over there and here, I have only one solution, to fish where I want": in his eyes, this sets illegality up to be the norm. Because it cannot be enforced, the regulation is a medium for negotiation, in this case, a highly conflictual one.

These three cases cover the diversity of the situations observed in our case studies, with regulations used either to inform and raise awareness, or to negotiate and, in this case, a tacit selection is made by the MPA between inviolable regulations and flexible regulations. The enforcement of regulations is then subject to conventions [41] that tacitly establish which rules are to be respected, which are negotiable and which infringements will be tolerated, with de facto prioritisation. Concerned with raising the awareness of its interlocutors and in the position of negotiator, the MPA endeavours to preserve an "area of potential agreement", not breaking the thread of dialogue with those responsible for the greatest pressures on the environmental assets it intends to protect. This is a pragmatic choice in light of uncontrollable uses (that are prolific and evolving and/or prior to the creation of the MPA, and thus enjoy significant legitimacy), which can only be limited by negotiation that relies on regulations that do not involve sanctions. Thus, the MPA does not dictate regulations in view of ensuring that they are all respected, but does so in order to have a medium for dialogue and to negotiate uses.

Nevertheless, as we will see, in certain cases, one eventuality can be sanctions for their own sake, with a deviation from the rule to the detriment of both the most vulnerable populations and conservation. Negotiation is then used to legitimise regular and illegal harvesting by the authorities responsible for inspections either for private ends and/or to fund the inspections. In India, for example, in the Gulf of Mannar, what should be a "no-go zone" is qualified as an "open access zone" by a local scientist, concealing a permanent negotiation between seaweed harvesters and National Marine Park rangers. Locally, the authorities responsible for offshore

<sup>7</sup> Playa Blanca receives more than 10,000 people per day, although its load capacity was assessed by the Park at 3,124 people per day. Located on the park's boundary, its tourist numbers lead to a proliferation of uncontrolled uses offshore and catering activities with no liquid waste management (Castaño C. A., 2016, La debacle ambiental y social de Playa Blanca, Opinión, 2016/12/29).

inspections evoke a "gentleman's agreement", which, if violated, leads to informal fines that are negotiated and adapted to the limited capacity to pay of groups that cannot be prevented from working in view of their vulnerability. Our interviews confirm the study conducted by Rajagopalan [42] that observed that, in a context of intensified inspections in the Biosphere Reserve, officials confiscated harvesting tools, which the offenders could retrieve if they offered "gifts". The ICSF, an NGO supporting fish-workers, made it clear to the community that it should demand a formal sanction rather than paying informal fines, but this has occurred only once since 2008. If the regulation is a medium for negotiation, the danger is that one of the results of its creation is to offer the possibility of negotiated and illegal harvesting of resources and taking from users, as Sundaresan [43] illustrated in a more urban context.
