California’s ocean and coasts are central to the state’s identity, economy, and the everyday wellbeing of its residents. Yet access to and benefits from these areas and ecosystems remain deeply unequal. Despite mandates to ensure public access and enhance opportunities for livelihoods, recreation, and education, the regional mosaic of ocean health, amenities, and engagement continues to be influenced by historical policies of exclusion, uneven investment and regulatory enforcement, and ongoing coastal gentrification. In this report, we examine how marine governance approaches (including the state’s Marine Protected Area (MPA) network) can better align ecological objectives with distributive, procedural, and recognitional equity. As part of a participatory and community-engaged research approach, we partnered with local organizations dedicated to advancing environmental justice and promoting ocean literacy to investigate a) how access, activities, values, and benefits from the ocean vary across diverse communities in Central California; and b) how benefits are influenced by management and social and environmental change.
Using a combination of semi-structured interviews, a large-scale survey instrument (n = 2,191 responses), targeted case studies, and focus group discussions, we worked to engage demographics underrepresented in collaborative coastal management processes to date (i.e., urban fishers, Tribal members, environmentally disadvantaged communities, etc.) in providing data, interpreting research results, and co-developing management recommendations. Our findings indicate that, despite existing legal frameworks, ocean access and benefits continue to accrue disproportionately to affluent, White communities living in close proximity to the coast, while underserved communities (including Black and Asian Americans, Tribal members, and/or low-income households) face compounding barriers (i.e., costs, information, social gatekeeping, etc.). In addition, we demonstrate that the loudest and most prominent voices in ocean and coastal management may not represent the needs and priorities of underserved communities, or Californians at large. Though much of modern policy discourse surrounds the provision and sustainability of material attributes (income, livelihoods, food, etc.), relational and subjective values associated with connection, healing, identity, and cultural expression were of primary importance for much of our study population. Rather than a strict focus on objective, ecological, and/or economic metrics, we suggest that MPAs and other conservation interventions would benefit from increased consideration of the diverse connections people have with marine environments (and the multitude of activities that support them) while pursuing strategies that simultaneously advance environmental health and human wellbeing. Indeed, increased attention to the lived experience of different populations across the Central Coast (as rooted in diverse uses, values, cultures, and traditions) is required to better understand how California residents are impacted by and respond to social and environmental change and management interventions.
As currently designed and managed, MPAs alone are unlikely to deliver a full suite of benefits to underserved communities at scale. Yet embedding equity in all stages of the adaptive management cycle and pairing ecological goals with tangible investments in access infrastructure (affordable transit/parking, accessible facilities), information and safety (multilingual signage, clear and transparent rules, targeted community programming), and pathways to local workforce development and Tribal co-stewardship could measurably increase engagement, trust, and support. When pursued collectively, we suggest such strategies may help cultivate a new generation of ocean advocates and stewards, aligning biodiversity gains with equitable ocean outcomes for underserved communities, while promoting durable and shared wellbeing across the coast.
