Marine Protected Area Beyond the Biophysical Justifications: A Case Study of the Costs and Benefits of Establishing and Managing 3 MPAs in Thailand

Marine protected areas are recognized as being instrumental to protection and restoration of fragile coastal and marine ecosystems but there is a lack of empirical studies to prove that investments in MPAs is also economically feasible. This study is a Cost–Benefit Analysis of 3 Marine Protected Areas recently established in Thailand; two are near-shore MPAs and one is off-shore. Even if the only benefits considered is sustainable revenue from coastal fisheries as in the Base-case scenario, investments to establish and manage MPAs are economically feasible. On additional investments to impose additional no-take zones, the NPV for the additional investments are positive and higher for all the three MPAs if the level of impact is low but all turn negative when impacts increase. Additional investments in restoring and replanting seagrass and mangroves are not economically feasible for the two near-shore MPAs but this is not conclusive as only the benefits of carbon were included and the calculation did not include the economic value of other co-benefits. On the economic feasibility of adding investments for icon species conservation, the non-use values estimated clearly indicated that there is demand for conservation measures but that the challenge is how to create funds mobilization mechanisms to capture such values.