With growing attention to and use of marine protected areas [MPAs], there are an increasing number of policy goals ascribed to these area-based management tools [ABMT]. One expectation is that an MPA can increase system “resilience”, yet oftentimes resilience – including whether we are considering social, economic or ecological resilience – stays unspecified. In recent years, there has also been a specific focus on MPAs as tools to promote climate change resilient ocean systems. Through a meta-analysis of the scientific literature and an analysis of over one thousand three hundred voluntary commitments made at the United Nation Ocean Conference, this work presents a typology of how the concept of resilience is beyond deployed in MPA science and policy-making. Further analysis, supplemented by semi- structure interviews and surveys highlights the diversity of ways in which practitioners define MPA success. These analyses reveal that – in contemporary international ocean governance – different stakeholders are connecting MPAs to different forms of resilience. This work also highlights a disconnect between expressed goals of MPAs, such as cultural effectiveness, and what is deemed important in practice (ecological factors)
