FROM CLIMATE AWARENESS TO CLIMATE-INFORMED PLANNING IN EXISTING MARINE PROTECTED AREAS

Joseph M Maina , MAJAMBO GAMOYO, KULWA MTAKI, RUSHINGISHA GEORGE, JAMES MBUGUA, PETER RUVUGA, WANJIKU GITHU, Louis Celliers 

Marine protected areas underpin global biodiversity commitments, but climate change challenges management systems built around historical conditions. Existing guidance defines climate adaptive practice, yet many plans contain resilience-supporting provisions without linking them explicitly to climate decisions. We present CliMPA, a human-centred framework that connects management needs, actor roles, social-ecological pathways and climate evidence within management-plan review. Plan diagnosis, stakeholder and agency analysis, participatory systems mapping and climate-information translation form a linked sequence in which each step informs the next. At Mafia Island Marine Park, existing provisions supported resilience but were not explicitly connected to climate-informed decisions. Managers, communities and experts represented vulnerability differently; integrating their knowledge retained livelihood, market and governance pathways less visible in a predominantly biophysical representation. These pathways guided selection of decision-relevant climate information and development of a management-facing factsheet, providing traceable inputs for subsequent risk assessment, adaptation planning and management-plan revision.