Step zero of marine protected areas of Brazil

Abstract Despite the efforts to improve marine conservation through marine protected areas, effective management is challenging. Challenges in management have been attributed, amongst other reasons, to the initial process of Marine Protected Area (MPA) creation. In this context, the objective of this study is to describe the creation processes of Brazilian MPAs, via the “step zero” analysis. We analyzed eight MPAs through interviews with key informants. The main lessons learned from this study, is that the process of creation did not take into account fundamental aspects such as previous studies about local socioecological dynamic and citizen participation in the decision making processes, foreseen by the norms and guidelines of the Brazilian system. These variables, in turn, may explain why MPAs often demonstrate challenges in the management process. Furthermore, describing Brazil's experiences with creating MPAs, we believe we are contributing to the development of the step zero analysis, as well as to the decision making in the creation of MPAs in the national context.