4.3. Identifying priorities for launching comprehensive MSP and zoning
Because tropical coastal seas are vast, needs for effective management are great, and stretch both human and financial resources.
Effective systematic use of MSP needs to be guided by priorities
that focus management attention where it is most needed, particularly where localized, discreet actions, such as the establishment
of small scale MPAs or community-based management regimes,
cannot stem the tide of degradation. We suggest that first order
priorities for MSP can be identified by a simple measure of distance
from urban centers, as a proxy for evaluating where pressures and
conflicts are the greatest (Fig. 3). But we took our analysis beyond
the simple, linear approach pictured in Fig. 3, to map gradations in
intensity of human impacts across the coastal sea by integrating
distance and population density as a simple proximity index