Soufrière Marine Management Area — User-Financed Co-Managed Reserve Network

The Soufrière Marine Management Area (SMMA), on St Lucia's southwest coast, grew out of a 1992 consultation among fishers, dive operators and hoteliers over conflicting uses of the same reef. It was established in 1994 under the 1984 Fisheries Act and formally proclaimed a marine protected area in June 1995, zoned into marine reserves (no-take, diving permitted), fishing priority areas, yacht mooring areas and multiple-use areas. Around 150 fishers are registered users, roughly two-thirds full-time; 20 pot- and gillnet fishers displaced by the new no-take zones received a monthly stipend of EC$400 for one year as transition compensation.

The ecological evidence is unusually strong for a small Caribbean MPA. Roberts et al. (2001, Science) found that within five years of the reserve network's creation, catches by adjacent artisanal fishers rose by 46-90%, depending on gear type, as fish spilled over reserve boundaries. Hawkins et al. (2006, Biological Conservation) followed up with annual censuses through 2002 and found that total biomass of commercially important species had more than quadrupled inside the no-take reserves and tripled in the surrounding fishing grounds.

Financially, the SMMA was designed to become self-sustaining through user fees (diving, yacht moorings), souvenir sales and donations rather than a government subvention, and operates as a government-authorised, self-financed NGO, supplemented over the years by project grants from GIZ, the GEF Small Grants Programme, NOAA, UNEP and USAID.

A more cautionary note: a 2020 peer-reviewed governance analysis (published in Marine Policy / Ocean & Coastal Management-family journals via ScienceDirect) found that while SMMA's co-management model was historically effective, it has become increasingly challenged by external driving forces such as shifting tourism pressure and funding constraints — a reminder that even a well-evidenced, decades-old PES/co-management scheme needs sustained governance investment to keep delivering its early results.

Read the full analysis: https://smmainc.com/about-the-smma/