%0 Journal Article %T "Dangerous Targets"revisited: Old dangers in new contexts plaguemarine protected areas %+ Sound seas %+ MARES program %+ Laboratoire d'Excellence CORAIL (LabEX CORAIL) %+ Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l'environnement (CRIOBE) %+ ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoralCoE) %A Agardy, Tundi %A Claudet, Joachim %A Day, Jon C. %< avec comité de lecture %@ 1052-7613 %J Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems %I Wiley %V 26 %N Supplement S2 %P 7–23 %8 2016-09 %D 2016 %R 10.1002/aqc.2675 %Z Environmental Sciences/Environmental EngineeringJournal articles %X 1. The use of targets to provide measurable objectives and benchmarks for management, conservation, andrestoration of ecosystems is commonplace. In the marine and coastal realms, targets have been successful insetting sustainable limits to fisheries harvests, thresholds for pollutants, and recommended amounts ofrepresentative habitat included in marine protected area (MPA) networks. Quantifiable targets can dissuadegovernments from making dubious claims about investments in ocean protection that sound impressive butcannot be verified. Examples are presented where protection targets have been used successfully for marinemanagement, and instances where measurable and meaningful benchmarks serve to allow tracking of true progress.2. However, the setting of targets can also be a double-edged sword. In some cases, targets have proven useful,but in many instances, interventions made to fulfil targets not only give a false illusion of progress or even success,they present opportunity costs that impede further conservation.3. Some of these issues were raised in the 2003 article ‘Dangerous Targets?: Unresolved issues and ideologicalclashes around marine protected areas’ that appeared in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and FreshwaterEcosystems. Since its publication, the article’s warnings about how targets can sometimes be dangerous andcounter-productive have led to intense debate among scientists and policy-makers alike, and the paper has beencited in more than 500 publications. Yet today, more than a dozen years after the first ‘Dangerous Targets’publication, new targets are driving more MPA designations and conservation strategies than ever before, andthe ‘dangerous’ aspects of target setting have been largely ignored.4. This paper discusses old ‘dangers’ in the context of new developments in marine conservation, including thelingering problem of having simplistic metrics drive marine policies, and the unintended result that can often occurwhen outputs (percentage of area under MPA designation) do not align with true outcomes of effectivemanagement and conservation. Newly emerging ‘dangers’ in letting areal targets (percentage of area underMPA designation) drive MPA designations are also discussed, including how the rush to fulfil obligations toprotect a certain proportion of area is taking place in planning, separate from broader level, and potentiallymore holistic, marine spatial planning (MSP).5. The paper suggests five recommendations that would allow policy-makers to use targets more effectively,including: (1) increase transparency in planning, especially around specific goals and objectives of MPAestablishment; (2) use time-based areal targets when representativity is a goal of the protected area strategy; (3) %G English %L hal-01380963 %U https://univ-perp.hal.science/hal-01380963 %~ SDE %~ EPHE %~ UNIV-AG %~ AFRIQ %~ CNRS %~ UNIV-PERP %~ UNIV-NC %~ EHESS %~ IFREMER %~ GIP-BE %~ AGROPOLIS %~ CRIOBE %~ PSL %~ UNIV-POLYNESIE %~ UPF %~ TEST-DEV %~ UNC %~ EPHE-PSL %~ EHESS-PSL %~ LABEX-CORAIL %~ PUNC-UNC %~ LARJE-PUNC-UNC %~ LA-NI-PUNC-UNC %~ CRESICA-PUNC-UNC %~ LIRE-PUNC-UNC %~ RESONANCES-PUNC-UNC