A Community-Grounded Applied Approach to Strengthening Marine Protected Area Governance: Insights from the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Chile

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are key tools for mitigating the impacts of human activities on marine biodiversity and addressing climate change. Consequently, nations worldwide have committed to international targets to expand MPA coverage, leading to a rapid increase in protected areas and generating significant challenges for financing and effective management, particularly in developing countries. Under this scenario, multiple stakeholders, including local communities, academia, governments, and national and international organizations, are joining efforts to reduce financial gaps and strengthen MPA governance and management. In this study, we present the case of the Juan Fernández Archipelago in Chile, where multiple organizations collaborated to develop a socially robust and locally grounded governance system for a network of MPAs through a comprehensive community engagement process conducted on Robinson Crusoe Island between 2022 and 2024. As a result, a Functional Community Organization was established to co-manage the MPAs with the Chilean government, and three MPA management plans encompassing ~580,000 km2 were approved. Among them, the management plan of the Multiple-Use MPA “Mar de Juan Fernández” was the first approved under the new Chilean Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service (Law 21,600), setting a national precedent for co-management. Our findings show that effective MPA governance depends not only on institutional design but also on the extent to which governance arrangements are socially embedded and locally legitimate. In this context, community-grounded and context-sensitive engagement processes facilitated high levels of participation, strengthened representation, and supported the co-production of knowledge, providing a strong foundation for the long-term implementation of conservation objectives.