Legal protection of ecosystem services provided by Marine Protected Areas in Mexico

The overarching goal of Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) is to sustain the long-term capacity of marine ecosystems to deliver a range of ecosystem services (ES). Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can be considered as a part of the efforts made towards EBM focusing in area planning. The implementation of MPAs with the objective of assuring the flow of ES and its benefits towards society is currently in its initial stages due to lack of specific information about the operation and value of the ES offered by MPAs. In Mexico, MPAs represent one of the main conservation and management tools of the territory and its resources. In order to identify the level of legal protection of ES provided by the federal decrees that create MPAs, in this article we present as a case study the analysis of the specific protection of ES in MPAs in this country. We compiled the creation decrees of the 66 Mexican MPAs. Our analysis adopted three perspectives: ES explicitly mentioned in the decrees, ES indirectly mentioned in the decrees, and ES actually present in each MPA. The analyzed MPA decrees recognize that these areas provide four types of ecosystem functions (provision services, regulation services, support services, and cultural services). Of all existing Mexican MPAs, more than half of them (54.5%) have decrees of creation in which an ES is directly mentioned as a cause of their creation. 39.3% of the MPAs decrees contain paragraphs or words describing an ES. All the MPA categories actually provide a larger number of ES than those mentioned or alluded to in official decrees. We conclude that although there are legal frameworks for the protection of specific elements of marine and coastal ecosystems, MPAs represent the legal tool allowing for their integration under the ecosystem approach. In the Mexican case, there are voids to be filled in order for MPAs to fulfill the function assigned to them by Mexican laws.