Financing Marine Protected Areas for a Sustainable and Equitable Ocean: A Narrative Review (Research Square)

Summary

• The review selected 100 papers from systematic searches of Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar (2000–2025) plus grey literature and snowball sampling.p.2
• The three database searches yielded 1,286 papers, leaving 885 papers for title/abstract screening after 401 duplicates were discarded.p.4
• Managing a representative global MPA network is estimated at $5–19 billion per year in the literature.p.7
• The global value of coral reef tourism is estimated at around $36 billion per year.p.14
• Only Seychelles and Indonesia have issued sovereign blue bonds, with total issuance in the single-digit billions of US dollars.p.13
• Growth of MPAs under the 30x30 initiative has been faster than the finances and capabilities to manage them.p.2

Key insights

1. Of 885 papers screened, 223 went to full-text review and 147 of them were excluded.p.4
2. Debt-for-nature swaps in the literature center on Seychelles (2016) and Belize (2021).p.10
3. Blue bond proceeds were only partly directed to MPA management in the two sovereign issuances to date.p.7
4. Blue carbon is a financing mechanism with a defined revenue channel, whereas the blue economy is a broader framing that does not specify one.p.14
5. Equity is much more often referenced than put into practice in the reviewed corpus.p.16
6. Small-scale fishers, coastal communities and Indigenous peoples have shouldered much of the cost burden of expanded MPAs.p.2