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Does Your Public Comment Count? Two Ocean Wins Show How · How To Protect The Ocean

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  In 2004, halfway across the world,
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  a government agency rezoned an entire National Marine Park and ended up being
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  one of the largest protected area decisions on the planet.
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  And somehow they ended up with broad public support instead of a fight.
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  They didn't just get lucky, right?
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  They built that process specifically to design to earn the support that they
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  received. And here's what that process actually looks like and what
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  it tells us about how any of these decisions
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  can be made in the future and just even now in the present.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is where I talk about marine science,
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  marine conservation, and just how we can protect the ocean better.
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  I am a marine biologist myself.
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  I am also a science communicator and I am the ocean communications manager
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  for a consulting firm called Pisces Oceans where we work with ocean projects
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  to help them succeed to make a bigger ocean impact.
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  Today on the podcast, we're gonna be talking about marine protected areas,
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  just like we have been all week.
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  We're gonna be talking about something that's really,
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  really important is actually getting public support.
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  That doesn't always happen, and it and it can be very tricky.
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  And there's a lot of things that have happened over the years,
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  over the decades.
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  That have improved that process.
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  But we're gonna be talking about two successes and what doesn't really work.
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  So, like the two successes, we're gonna talk about why they worked,
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  and we're also gonna be talking about another process that happens that doesn't have
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  the right things to make this work and and it causes conflict,
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  which we kind of saw in the California Marine Protected Areas Network interview
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  I did with Anupa Asokon earlier this this week.
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  So you can check that out after you listen to this one.
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  But this is something that's really important because like
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  I think the biggest thing when we talk about MPAs or we talk about
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  any kind of public process where conservation is the focus,
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  people wonder if it's even worth showing up to a public meeting,
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  right? About any kind of environmental decision.
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  Or is it just kind of noise that they just like,
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  hey, yeah, we want to get your input,
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  but we're not going to listen.
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  To be honest, this happened already this year or last year when
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  the American government put out a public opinion period for about a month
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  or a little bit longer.
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  For the American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands,
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  the CNMI, when it came to looking at and exploring deep sea mining.
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  Sixty-six thousand people came out and said,
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  We do not want deep sea mining around the Mariana Islands.
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  And the government said, Hey, you know what?
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  Actually, we're gonna do it and we're gonna double the amount.
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  So that makes people wonder like,
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  why do we even show up to these public processes?
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  Cause having like a just a bare petition you know,
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  where you just submit and w and wait.
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  with no dedicated structure for managing conflict or reconciliation,
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  ~ compete like some kind of competing input in plain language.
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  like that doesn't necessarily work.
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  You need something to put together,
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  So here's the problem with that structure.
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  But before I talk about the problem,
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  I want explain first. When there is something at hand,
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  like something ~ environmental,
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  and an environmental decision needs to be made,
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  we'll say we'll use MPAs, that's what we've been talking all the day.
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  Marine Practical Areas, we've been talking about that all week.
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  When when a petition gets gets put forward of a question or of a worry or even
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  Proposing an MPA, that has to go through an entire process.
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  But if you just have this bare petition process and you submit,
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  you wait, and you don't have any dedicated structure for managing
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  any kind of conflict or reconciling competing input,
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  it just doesn't work. So this is the part of where like I've seen this stuff happen
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  where it's succeeded and I've seen where it hasn't succeeded.
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  So we're gonna talk about that today.
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  I'm gonna guide you through the process of what worked with two examples.
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  The first is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park,
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  the Marine Park. And this is, you know,
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  one of the wonders of the world.
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  We've been talking about a lot on the podcast because they have a huge barrier coral
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  reef. it is one of the most beautiful places in the world to go diving.
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  and it is the the ecosystem services,
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  the things that that that are provided through this process or through this barrier
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  reef park.
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  Is unbelievable and we need to protect it.
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  And so a while ago, back in the 70s,
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  they went Australia went through a process,
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  the government went through a process to put in these zones,
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  these managed management zones of the the Great Barrier Reef Park.
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  And they call it the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
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  And it's so it is it is a an authority on there that works to protect
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  the interests of a number of different coastal people,
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  but also the environmental aspect and protect the environmental aspect.
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  when they went through a part where they're like,
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  let's get feedback, because in the law,
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  they had to have feedback, right?
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  So you know, this is like 30 years later after it was it was put into place,
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  there was a what they called a Great Bearer Reese representative areas program,
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  which ran from 1999 to 2004 and rezoned the entire marine park.
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  One of the largest protected area planning decisions that have
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  Ever been undertaken. And it wasn't an optional thing for the agency to do.
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  They had to do this because it was governed by law,
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  right? It legally required a minimum of two separate formal public comment phases,
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  each at least a month long. And then one before a draft zoning plan
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  was ever written, and a second on the completed draft itself.
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  So people can comment on the different parts.
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  And on top of that,
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  There's a legal minimum. The agency built and ~ and
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  may maintained standing community structures.
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  So the local marine advisory committees and reef advisory committees.
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  So that ongoing dialogue with fishers,
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  tourism operators, and coastal communities happened continuously,
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  not just during the official two windows.
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  So this was something that was ongoing.
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  This was a system, a governing system that was put in place,
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  implemented to say, hey, this is how we're gonna go forth and we're gonna.
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  You know, move forward with all of these like getting that feedback from people.
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  It's been an ongoing conversation,
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  not just a one you submit and you just wait.
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  The process drew over 31,500 public submissions.
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  And the outcome, the no-take protection areas were like,
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  so I remember I said there was a different management zones.
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  One of them was no-take, meaning like you couldn't take anything from there.
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  Even researchers weren't allowed in to survey these places.
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  They were at five percent protection of the entire park.
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  So five percent of that park was no-take areas.
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  That went after this process went from 5% to more than 33%.
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  This was unprecedented at the time.
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  I remember sitting in on a lecture at Akata University where I did my graduate work.
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  And Brian Day, who was the chair of the park,
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  he was a director of the park,
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  he was like, Yeah, this is what we did,
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  and this was amazing. We did no clue that this was happening.
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  And a side story on top of that is that one of the things that they were looking
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  at was they had actually ~ followed and tracked fishers and where they would go.
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  And they noticed when they put the tracks like at first,
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  fishers were like really against you know it like increasing the
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  no take areas because that affected their business,
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  right? And then what they did is they said,
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  yeah, okay, well, I'll tell you what,
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  we're gonna overlay where you guys were,
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  so the tracks over this certain amount of time,
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  and ~ we're gonna show you where we wanna increase.
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  And it actually happened where the increase in the in the area didn't affect where
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  these fishers fished. And so they like,
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  Okay, well, this makes sense. Like,
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  yeah, this is where you guys are are fishing,
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  and we want to protect it just on the cusp of that,
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  but not where you fish. And the fish are like,
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  Yeah, that makes sense. No problem.
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  That's actually going to improve our fishing later on.
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  So I'm sure it wasn't that great of a dialogue in terms of that easy,
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  but you know, that's what they did.
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  They used the data that they were collecting to provide that in the comment period.
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  They had these conversations with fishers,
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  and it ended up winning. And not only that,
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  were they
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  The whole process was recognized internationally as best practice,
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  winning multiple national and international awards,
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  including the UNESCO Environmental Prize.
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  So the program's own director later co-authored an analysis,
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  making a specific point worth repeating.
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  Strong science alone would not have produced that outcome.
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  It took science, public participation,
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  and the political support that participation generated together
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  as three connected pieces.
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  Not one substituting for the others.
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  That's huge. That is what we need to put into these plans so that we get the buy-in.
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  Because the marine protected areas is great in theory,
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  but unless you have buy-in, it just becomes a paper park because nobody's gonna want
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  to follow what what they're doing,
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  like what the plan was to do. And if you get that buy-in,
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  that's even better. Now the second case is closer to
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  the US, actually in the US, in California.
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  And so this is the Shumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary
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  off California's Central Coast.
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  So the critical difference here is where the idea came from.
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  So before the Marine Park had already been put in,
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  like the Great Berry Reef Marine Park had already been established for
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  a number of years. And this was part of their ongoing feedback and
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  and using science and feedback and public support to do that.
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  But this one wasn't like a state or a federal agency proposing a protected area,
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  asking the public to react to it.
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  The Northern Shumash Tribal Council itself nominated the site in 2015.
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  And it was the results of like decades of the tribe's own advocacy for this area.
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  So from there, it moved through NOAA's formal stage sanctuary designation process,
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  an initial nomination review, a scoping phase seeking public input
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  on boundaries and priorities.
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  Releasing of draft management environmental documents,
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  and then a defined like final public comment period.
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  And that final comment window alone drew more than 98,000 submissions
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  of people putting comments, with independent analysis finding over 99%
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  in support of the protected area.
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  So the sanctuary was formally designated in November 2024.
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  It's the first tribally nominated national marine sanctuary in the country.
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  That's huge.
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  That's that's insane to get 99% report ~ support from
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  a tribal nominated marine sanctuary,
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  huge, huge to be able to do that.
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  I don't think we've ever seen that happen,
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  obviously in the US, but I don't know if I've seen it happen elsewhere either.
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  And then of course with the Great Barra Reef,
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  you went from no-take growth from five percent to over thirty-three percent
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  of the entire marine park. That I've like that was unheard of at the time.
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  Like there's there's no way that that happens.
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  So the the the real thing here is that when you look at the petition only process
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  without any kind of stage ~ phases or standing advisory structure
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  or clear proposal ownership, is if that's all missing,
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  then you you don't have anything.
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  This here had a structure to the process.
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  It was the fact that for the Schumas ~ example,
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  it was the fact that there was a petition that was submitted after a lot
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  of work and they put all the information in there.
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  It went through a federal process where state authorities were involved.
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  And the tribal council was involved the entire way.
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  And of course, they were in support of it because they're the ones who nominated it.
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  The government just provided the feedback in terms of regulatory process
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  and handling all the public comment.
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  When the public comment comes out,
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  98,000 public comments, or even more than 98,000,
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  and 99% support. That's like that's success.
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  That is success. And I think what what what happens is when you when
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  you fall short of that.
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  And you don't put that structure in,
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  you don't get buy-in for the marine protected areas,
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  and that becomes a problem. That's where it becomes a paper park where nobody
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  is going to listen to the rules and they're just gonna do what they want
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  to do because they didn't feel heard,
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  constant ~ contact. And I think that's really important.
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  And of course, having the structure is just like a one part of the process.
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  To make sure that everybody gets their say within the struct,
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  like within the public comment period,
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  whether it's written submissions or in person,
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  that's another story, which I think we found out that it could go very wrong when
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  we s when we spoke to Anupa in the latest California run,
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  MPL run, like the Marine Protected Area Network run,
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  where people were shouting back and forth.
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  Some people didn't feel safe to say anything.
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  And that's a that's a an ~ you know a a way of of that process failing.
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  Because that doesn't make it safe to first speak out.
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  You're not getting buy-in from everybody.
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  Then people are going complain after.
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  And they may not listen to the new,
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  the new rules. And so what I want you guys to think about and listening to this,
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  you're probably wondering like,
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  why do we need to care? Because the public process,
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  if that opens up near you and you want to have a say,
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  this is how it goes. So I want you to understand the process so that
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  you feel like you can go and speak your mind.
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  Right. You can you can get a group of people to go.
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  You can go with your family. You can go on your own,
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  but you know the process, you're familiar with the process.
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  So you're not going in blind and you're not going in because sometimes these
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  processes can be emotionally charged,
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  which I understand for a lot of places,
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  but you want to still have that background and that understanding of how
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  the str the process works and how the structure works.
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  By all means, join another group.
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  Like the you know, Surfrider always organizes ways to go to these processes.
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  Anupa's organization, Fish On,
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  is also like helping to organize like buses to go to Sacramento in in October
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  to be able to attend these public meetings and make sure that people feel safe
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  to say things and support one another.
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  Because everybody has a stake within a marine protected area and they
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  all deserve to have a voice, but not one should be listened to over
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  the other or shouted over the other.
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  And when we have a good design process and we can
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  It could be repeatable just like science.
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  You know, it doesn't mean that luck plays a role.
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  It's it's the it's the actual difference between ~ you know lasting conflict
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  and lasting buy-in if you have that structure.
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  And I think when we these two examples show a a ~ perfect way of doing things,
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  obviously it's never perfect, but a good way of doing things and having
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  a having a solid structure so that people can feel hurt.
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  And that's the episode for today.
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  It is a simple one. It is about public comments.
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  And it's one of the most important parts of a protected area process.
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  Whether it's just been designated or it's trying to be designated
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  or they're trying to make improvements and assessment.
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  This is what really counts. And now you've been told how it works.
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  So I'd love to hear your experiences doing a public comment in person
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  as well as participating on one written.
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  Because I would love to know your experience in in both or either.
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  ~ because this is the start of a conversation.
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  ~ I want to hear you, I want to I want you to continue it.
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  I want to have that conversation with you and see what your experience is like,
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  good or bad. Hopefully it's good.
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  But if it's bad, I would love to hear how we can learn and how I can learn
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  to tell people of what some of the experiences are and and what we can learn
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  in the future. So I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode
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  of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Thank you for joining us. Have a good day.
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  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.