Does Your Public Comment Count? Two Ocean Wins Show How

0:00In 2004, halfway across the world, a government agency rezoned an entire national marine park and ended up being one of the largest protected area decisions on the planet. And somehow they ended up with broad public support instead of a fight. They didn't just get lucky, right? They built that process specifically to design to earn the support that they received. And here's what that process actually looks like and what it tells us about how any of these decisions can be made in the future and just even now in the present. This is the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is where I talk about marine science, marine conservation, and just how we can protect the ocean better. I am a marine biologist myself. I am also a science communicator and I am the ocean communications manager for a consulting firm called Pisces Oceans, where we work with ocean projects to help them succeed to make a bigger ocean impact. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking

1:01about marine protected areas, just like we have been all week. We're going to be talking about something that's really, really important is actually getting public support. That doesn't always happen and it can be very tricky. And there's a lot of things that have happened over the years, over the decades, that have improved that process. But we're going to be talking about two successes and what doesn't really work. So like the two successes, we're going to talk about why they work. And we're also going to be talking about another process that happens that doesn't have the right things to make this work. And it causes conflict, which we kind of saw in at the California Marine Protected Area Network, interview I did with Anupa Sokan earlier this week. So you can check that out after you listen to this one, but this is something that's really important. Because I think the biggest thing when we talk about MPAs, or we talk about any kind of public process, where conservation is the focus. People wonder if it's even worth showing up to a public meeting. But any kind of environmental decision. Or is it just kind of noise that they just like, hey, yeah, we want to get your input, but we're not going to listen. To be honest, this happened already this year or last year

2:03when the American government put out a public opinion period for about a month or a little bit longer for the American Smoa and the Northern Marion Islands, the CNMI, when it came to looking at an exploring deep sea mining. 66,000 people came out and said, we do not want deep sea mining around the Marion Islands. And the government said, hey, you know what? Well, actually, we're going to do it. And we're going to double the amount. So that makes people wonder, like, why do we even show up to these public processes? Because having like just a bare petition, you know, where you just submit and wait, with no dedicated structure for managing conflict or reconciliation, compete, like some kind of competing input in plain language, like that doesn't necessarily work. You need something to put together. So here's the problem with that structure. But before I talk about the problem, I want to explain first. When there is something at hand, like something environmental and environmental decision needs to be made, we'll say, we'll use MPAs, guess what we've been talking about all today, marine precarious. We've been talking about that all week. When a petition gets put forward of a question or of a worry

3:07or even proposing an MPA, that has to go through an entire process. But if you just have this bare petition process and you submit, you wait, and you don't have an dedicated structure for managing any kind of conflict or reconciling competing input, it just doesn't work. So this is the part of where like, I've seen this stuff happen where it's succeed, and I've seen where it hasn't succeeded. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm going to guide you through the process of what work with two examples. The first is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The Marine Park. And this is one of the wonders of the world. We've been talking about a lot on the podcast because they have a huge barrier coral reef. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world to go diving. And it is the ecosystem services, the things that are provided through this process or through this barrier reef park is unbelievable. And we need to protect it. And so a while ago back in the 70s, they Australia went through a process, the government went through a process to put in these zones,

4:08these management zones of the Great Barrier Reef Park. And they called the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. And it is an authority on there that works to protect the interests of a number of different coastal people, but also the environmental aspect and protect the environmental aspects. When they went through a part where they're like, let's get feedback. Because in the law, they had to have feedback. So this is like 30 years later after it was put into place. There was a what they call the Great Barrier Reef Representative Areas program, which ran from 1999 to 2004 and rezone the entire marine park. One of the largest protected area planning decisions that have ever been undertaken. And it wasn't an optional thing for the agency to do. They had to do this because it was governed by law. It legally required a minimum of two separate performal public comment phases, each at least a month long. And then one before a draft zoning plan was ever written

5:10and a second on the completed draft itself. So people can comment on the different parts. And on top of that, there's a legal minimum, the agency built and maintained a standing community structure. So the local marine advisory committees and reef advisory committees. So that ongoing dialogue with fishers, tourism operators, and coastal communities happen continuously, not just during the official two windows. So this was something that was ongoing. This was a system, a governing system that was put in place, implemented to say, hey, this is how we're going to go forth. And we're going to move forward with all of these, like getting that feedback from people. It's going to an ongoing conversation. Not just a one, you submit and you just wait. The process drew over 31,500 public submissions. And the outcome, the no take protection areas, or like, so I remember I said, there was a different management zone. One of them was no take, meaning like you couldn't take anything from there, even researchers weren't allowed in to survey these places. They were at 5% protection of the entire park.

6:12So 5% of that park was no take areas. That went after this process went from 5% to more than 33%. This was unprecedented at the time. I remember sitting in on a lecture at a Katie University where I did my graduate work. And Brian Day, who was the chair of the park, he was the director of the park, he was like, yeah, this is what we did. And this was amazing. We didn't know clue that this was happening. And a side story on top of that is that one of the things that they were looking at was they had actually followed and tracked fishers and where they would go. And they noticed when they put the tracks, at first fishers were like really against increasing the no take areas because that affected their business, right? And then what they did is they said, oh yeah, okay, well, I'll tell you what, we're gonna overlay where you guys were, so the tracks over this certain amount of time. And we're gonna show you where we wanna increase. And it actually happened where the increase in the area didn't affect where these fishers fished. And so they were like, oh, okay, well, this makes sense. Like yeah, this is where you guys are fishing.

7:13And we wanna protect it just on the cusp of that, but not where you fish. And the fish are like, yeah, that makes sense. No problem. That's actually gonna improve our fishing later on. So I'm sure it wasn't that great of a dialogue in terms of that easy, but that's what they did. They used the data that they were collecting to provide that in the common period. They had these conversations with fishers and it ended up winning. Not only that, the whole process recognized internationally as best practice, winning multiple national and international awards, including the UNESCO Environmental Prize. So the program's own director, later co-authored analysis, making a specific point worth repeating. Strong science alone would not have produced that outcome. It took science, public participation, and the political support that participation generated together as three connected pieces, not one substituting for the others. That's huge. That is what we need to put into these plans so that we get the buy-in.

8:14Because the marine protected areas is great in theory, but unless you have buy-in, it just becomes a paper park because nobody's gonna wanna follow what they're doing, like what the plan was to do. And if you get that buy-in, that's even better. Now the second case is closer to the US, actually in the US, in California. And so this is the Schumach Heritage National Marine Santerary of California Central Coast. So the critical difference here is where the idea came from. So before the marine park had already been put in, like the Great Brewery for Reef Marine Park had already been established for a number of years and this was part of their ongoing feedback and using science and feedback and public support to do that. But this one wasn't like a state or a federal agency proposing a protected area, asking the public to react to it. The Northern Schumach Tribal Council itself nominated the site in 2015. And it was the results of like decades of the tribe's own advocacy for this area.

9:17So from there it moved through those formal stage sanctuary designation process. An initial nomination review, a scoping phase seeking public input on boundaries and priorities, releasing of draft management environmental documents and then a defined like final public comment period. And that final comment window alone drew more than 98,000 submissions of people putting comments with independent analysis finding over 99% in support of the protected area. So the sanctuary was formally designated in November 2024. It's the first tribally nominated National Marine Sanctuary in the country. That's huge. That's insane. To get 99% report support from a tribal nominated marine sanctuary, huge. Huge to be able to do that. I don't think we've ever seen that happen. Obviously in the US, but I don't know if I've seen happen elsewhere either. And then of course with the great pair of reef, you went from no take growth from 5%

10:19to over 33% of the entire marine park. That I think I was unheard of at the time. There's no way that that happens. So the real thing here is that when you look at the petition only process without any kind of staged phases or standing advisory structure or clear proposal ownership, if that's all missing, then you don't have anything. This here had a structure to the process. It was the fact that for the Shumash example, it was the fact that there was a petition that was submitted after a lot of work and they put all the information in there. It went through a federal process where state authorities were involved and the tribal council was involved the entire way. And of course they were in support of it because they're the ones who nominated it. The government just provided the feedback in terms of regulatory process and handling all the public comment. When the public comment comes out, 98,000 public comments or even more than 98,000 and 99% support. That's like that's success.

11:19That is success. And I think what happens is when you fall short of that and you don't put that structure in, you don't get buy-in for the marine protected areas and that becomes a problem. That's where it becomes a paper park where nobody is going to listen to the rules and they're just gonna do what they wanna do because they didn't feel heard, constant contact. And I think that's really important. And of course, having the structure is just like a one part of the process to make sure that everybody gets their say within the structure, like within the public comment period, whether it's written submissions or in-person, that's another story which I think we found out that it could go very wrong when we spoke to a new bud in the latest California run, the Marine Protect Area Network run where people were shouting back and forth some people didn't feel safe to say anything. And that's a way of that process failing because that doesn't make it safe to speak out.

12:22You're not getting buy-in from everybody then people are gonna complain after and they may not listen to the new rules. And so what I want you guys to think about and listening to this, you're probably wondering why do we need to care because the public process, if that opens up near you and you wanna have a say, this is how it goes. I want you to understand the process so that you feel like you can go and speak your mind. Right, you can get a group of people to go, you can go with your family, you can go on your own, but you know the process, you're familiar with the process so you're not going in blind and you're not going in because sometimes these processes could be emotionally charged which I understand for a lot of places. But you wanna still have that background and that understanding of how the process works and how the structure works. By all means join another group, Surfrider always organizes ways to go to these processes. Anubas organization Fish On is also helping to organize like buses to go to Sacramento in October

13:24to be able to attend these public meetings and make sure that people feel safe to say things and support one another because everybody has a stake within a marine protected area and they all deserve to have a voice. But not one should be listened to over the other or shouted over the other. And when we have a good design process and it could be repeatable just like science, you know, it doesn't mean that luck plays a role. It's the actual difference between, you know, lasting conflict and lasting buy-in if you have that structure. And I think when we, these two examples show a perfect way of doing things, obviously it's never perfect but a good way of doing things and it has having a solid structure so that people can feel hurt. And that's the episode for today. It is a simple one. It is about public comments and it's one of the most important parts of a protected area process. Whether it's just been designated or it's trying to be designated or they're trying to make improvements and assessment.

14:25This is what really counts. And now you've been told how it works. So I'd love to hear your experiences doing a public comment in person as well as participating on one written because I would love to know your experience in both or either because this is the start of a conversation. I wanna hear you, I want you to continue it. I wanna have that conversation with you and see what your experience is like. Good or bad, hopefully it's good but if it's bad I would love to hear how we can learn and how I can learn to tell people of what some of the experiences are and what we can learn in the future. So I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Thank you for joining us. Have a good day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.