Mapping actor diversity is essential for advancing global seagrass conservation

Benjamin Lawrence Hopper Jones , Lucy Coals, Salomão Bandeira, Nathan Bennett, Steven Canty, Maricela de la Torre-Castro, Gabriel Grimsditch, Nicholas Hoad, Johannes Krause, Karine Magalhães, Anouska Mendzil, Irene Olive, Rachel Seary, Lindsey Smart, Oliver Thomas, Melissa Ward, Noura Al-Mansoori, Victor Mwakha Alati, Nessrine Alzahlawi, Ross Boucek, Joseph Boyle, Lyle Boyle, Jessa Marie Caabay, Antonio Castro, Himansu Das, Akbar Digdo, Carl Gough, Richard Lilley, Len McKenzie, Lina Mtwana Nordlund, Jillian Ooi, Jennifer Rehage, Ana Sousa, Flo Taylor, Susantha Udagedara, Vedharajan Balaji, Sebastian Villasante, Sieglind Wallner-Hahn

Seagrass conservation is increasingly organised around global agendas for protection, restoration, climate mitigation, biodiversity recovery and nature-positive finance. The actor systems that determine whether these agendas succeed remain poorly described, if at all. We developed a heuristic actor-centred framework for seagrass social-ecological systems, combining a literature scan with expert-informed scoring of 22 actor profiles across nine attributes. Actor-relevant seagrass research was concentrated around governance, pressure and dependent actors, while intervention and finance actors were rarely foregrounded. More importantly, material leverage, literature visibility and accountability were misaligned. Several actors with high capacity to shape seagrass outcomes, including fisheries managers, donors, government agencies, and commercial fisheries actors, were less visible than their potential influence suggests. We identify recurrent authority-dependence, impact-visibility and finance-accountability asymmetries that reveal hidden leverage points for conservation. Seagrass conservation must move beyond generic stakeholder language towards actor mapping that links ecological recovery with authority, incentives, legitimacy, knowledge and accountability.