Introduction

Geopolitical and socio-economic background 

 The Netherlands Antilles consist of 5 islands: Curacao and Bonaire off the coast of Venezuela, St. Maarten, St. Eustatius and Saba at the northern end of the Lesser Antilles island arc, some 150 km east of the Virgin Islands. Together with Aruba which has separated itself from the Netherlands Antilles, they form part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Although there are many family ties between the islands they are set apart by large differences in socio-economic development, as well as cultural, natural and demographic features. The Central Government resides in Curacao, but there exists a tendency towards greater decentralization of government to the respective Island Territories, which decentralization has de facto also included environmental issues. Each Island Territory is headed by a Lieutenant Governor who is appointed by the Governor General on behalf of the Queen and who chairs the elected Island Council as well as the Executive Council. The Island Council has legislative powers.

 Tourism is an important foreign exchange earner in the Netherlands Antilles as a whole and most certainly the number one foreign exchange earner for Bonaire and St. Maarten. Since much of their tourism is based on the climate, beaches and marine sports such as SCUBA diving, snorkeling, wind surfing and sailing, the sustained revenues from tourism will depend to a large extent on the quality of the natural environment. 

Historical background

 Although the first concrete proposal to establish a marine park (in Curacao) dates back to 1971, the actual establishment of the first marine park did not take place until almost ten years later, and not in Curacao, but in Bonaire. In the absence of a Government agency which could deal effectively with the planning, establishment and management of marine parks, the Netherlands Antilles National Parks Foundation, a private non-profit foundation better known by its Dutch acronym STINAPA, has always played and continues to play a central role in park development and management in the Netherlands Antilles. Although the decentralization process has also taken place within STINAPA and has resulted in separate foundations on the different islands of the Netherlands Antilles, these new non-governmental organizations (NGO's) continue to play the same role with respect to environmental management as the parent organization. 

Case histories

Bonaire Marine Park

 Bonaire is surrounded by continuous fringing reefs which have attracted SCUBA divers and snorkelers in increasing numbers for the last 25 years. The reefs support a small artisanal fishery but were otherwise hardly impacted by coastal development, tourism or land-based pollution until tourism development really began to take off in the late seventies. 
 Meanwhile the Government of Bonaire had been very forward thinking in banning spearfishing as early as 1971. In 1979 a three year project to establish a marine park, funded by World Wildlife Fund-Netherlands and the Dutch and Netherlands Antillean Governments, was initiated under the auspices of STINAPA. The Park stretches around the entire island and encompasses all nearshore waters down to the 60 m depth contour. Collecting or damaging of any plants or invertebrates is prohibited and anchoring is only allowed in front of the town of Kralendijk. The Park has two closed reserves for scientific research. Prior to management interventions the dive industry had already demonstrated an environmentally sensitive attitude and placed permanent moorings at their own initiative in order to prevent damage to fragile reef corals and invertebrates from anchoring. By 1990 the number of moorings had reached about 70.
 The Bonaire Marine Park developed successfully and by 1982 all essential park functions such as enforcement, interpretation and education, services, and research and monitoring were well in place. However, the park fell short in two respects: firstly, the park lacked a broad constituency because of insufficient public involvement in the early phases of its establishment, and secondly, the attempt to make the park self-financing through visitor fees failed primarily for political reasons. By the mid-eighties, when grant monies had run out, management of the Park reached a virtual standstill and STINAPA nor the local Government were able to reverse this trend (Van't Hof, 1987). In the absence of park staff it was the private sector which maintained the mooring system, briefed divers on the marine park regulations and reported violations to the authorities. 
 Finally, in 1990, as a result of serious concern expressed by various individuals and groups, the Island Government decided on an aggressive wake-up campaign for the Marine Park. Funding was provided for a three year period by the Dutch Government on the condition that a visitor fee system would be introduced which would eliminate the need for further subsidies beyond the three year period. New staff has been hired and the Marine Environment Ordinance, the enacting legislation for the Park, was amended to include the obligation for visitors to pay a $ 10.00 annual admission fee to the park, as well as to incorporate a licensing system for dive operators and a complete ban on taking of turtles. The Park continues to be managed by STINAPA under contract with the Island Government. STINAPA has set up a management committee in which the Government, STINAPA and the private sector have equal representation. January 1st, 1992 has been fixed as the starting date for the fee collection and the admission fees are expected to generate about $ 150,000 annually. This will cover the operational expenses of the Park, including a staff of 3 full-time and 2 part-time employees.
 Private sector involvement with the Bonaire Marine Park is important in several ways. In the past the dive operators have been involved with site selection for moorings and provided labor and services during mooring installation. They continue to play an important role in reporting violations of the Marine Environment Ordinance and in reporting maintenance needs of moorings. They also provide dive statistics and as of January 1st 1992 they will be primarily responsible for ensuring that visitors pay their admission fee. As mentioned earlier, their contribution to park management has been especially valuable during the period that the Park was without funding and they have been very helpful in making a boat and dive equipment available to the park manager.

Curacao Underwater Park

 The first plan for the establishment of a marine park in Curacao was developed in 1971. However, there was no political support for the idea in the early seventies and STINAPA focused on Bonaire where the diving industry was developing quickly and where the local Government had demonstrated an interest in environmental issues. In the early eighties, encouraged by the initial success of the Bonaire Marine Park, STINAPA launched a new proposal for a marine park in Curacao, covering a 21 km stretch of fringing reefs and 3 inner bays (a much larger area than proposed in 1971). This time the local Government endorsed the project and once again funding was provided by the World Wildlife Fund-Netherlands, the Dutch Government and the local Government. 
 The site was selected primarily on the basis of biological criteria. Most of the 21 km of reefs had been little impacted upon because of their remoteness from population centers and because of relatively few shore access points. This was a drawback in terms of the economic contribution of the proposed site in relation with tourism, but since Curacao offered no other sites with a similar pristine character, biological criteria prevailed in the site selection process.
 The strategy adopted for developing the Park was to act quickly, to create a high profile and to achieve continuous exposure in the media in order to generate public interest and support. The project was quite successful in this respect and in a year from its start the park area had been surveyed, moorings had been placed, park literature and interpretive materials  had been produced (Van't Hof and Cornet, 1983) and routine park patrols were carried out. The Park is being managed by a staff of two under the auspices of STINAPA and is being subsidized by the local Government. 
 Although the Park has de facto been in existence since late 1983 the local Government has still not passed the enacting legislation despite the fact that drafts were submitted already in 1985. This imposes a serious limitation to legal control of extractive and non-extractive resource uses in the Park. Presently the only control means are those provided for in the Reef Management Ordinance, which prohibits spearfishing - but not the possession of spearguns while in the water - and coral collecting. Even though the Curacao Underwater Park is actively managed, guided by a management plan (Strawbridge and Sybesma 1989), and is not entirely without financial support, it cannot fulfill the complete range of functions one would want a park to fulfill until the local Government will have passed the proposed enacting legislation.
 Private sector involvement with the Underwater Park has been fairly limited, most likely because few commercial dive operators were active initially in the area where the Park was created and they were not well organized. At a later stage one of the operators negotiated with the Government the replacement of the buoys installed by the Park with much heavier buoys, but the responsibility for maintaining these was never properly addressed, resulting in the loss of several buoys. Attempts by the Park Manager to obtain visitor statistics through the dive operators were also largely unsuccessful and were eventually abandoned. The private sector in Curacao has always been very keen on using the existence of the Underwater Park as a tool for the promotion of diving tourism, something which surprisingly has never received much attention in Bonaire. 

Saba Marine Park

 The Saba Marine Park came about in response to a request from the local Government how to integrate development of a small diving industry with resource conservation. The short answer to that was to create an island-wide marine park with zoning applied to accommodate different uses with a minimum of conflict (Van't Hof, 1985). The development of the Saba Marine Park bears a number of resemblances to that of the Bonaire Marine Park:

• very few human impacts had affected the marine environment 
• the local Government understood the importance of resource conservation
• dive operators were conservation-minded and installed a number of moorings at their own initiative
• the proposed park would include all nearshore waters down to the 60 m depth contour
• the park would be legislated through a comprehensive marine environment ordinance.

Lessons learned

 The Netherlands Antillean experience in developing and managing three marine parks is diverse but extremely valuable. It is particularly valuable because it relates to parks that are actually being managed on a day-to-day basis rather than to those which exist on paper only. It provides examples of success and near-failure. Analysis of the development and management of these three parks teaches us some important lessons.

Legal framework
 Park development in the Netherlands Antilles has not followed the more traditional sequence of events whereby  enabling legislation is passed first, followed by the designation of one or more protected areas. De facto establishment and even management of the three parks was initiated prior to their legislation. This has not hampered progress in the case of Bonaire and Saba, however, it creates a serious problem for the Curacao Underwater Park which is still awaiting legislation. The experiences in Saba have demonstrated the importance of incorporating visitor fees and operator licensing in the enacting legislation of the Park.

Institutional structure
 Management of protected areas by NGO's is rather unique in the Caribbean region. STINAPA and its sister NGO's on the various islands are managing protected areas irrespective of land tenure. The Bonaire Marine Park is managed under contract by STINAPA Bonaire, but in the case of the marine parks in Curacao and Saba management agreements with Governments are non-existing or less formal. Nevertheless the partnership between Government and NGO's has served the protected area system well. Government recognizes the specialized expertise that NGO's can offer and the service NGO's can provide at relatively small cost to them. NGO's are far less bureaucratic than Government and, most importantly, can appeal to a much larger group of donor agencies for protected area funding. NGO's can also ensure that revenues generated by the protected area benefit the same protected area rather than disappear in the general treasury without any guarantee that the revenue will be recycled in the protected area. 

Financial framework
 It is unrealistic to expect that Governments in developing countries are going to allocate more funding to protected area management in the near future. Therefore it is important to identify alternative sources of funding and in particular to work towards self-financing schemes for protected areas. The experiences from Bonaire and Saba are demonstrating that self-sufficiency is an attainable goal, at least for marine parks associated with tourism.

Site selection
 The Netherlands Antillean experience has demonstrated that it is advantageous to try and designate as large an area as possible as protected area and zone it for different uses. This approach provides a reasonable control over the marine resources of a relatively large area, while it has the psychological advantage that severe restrictions on resource use only need to be applied to relatively small areas.

Constituency building
 The importance of public involvement and consultation cannot be over-emphasized. The real challenge here is to take the proposals and the legislation to the people and the resource users, explain how they might affect people and listen to reasonable alternatives. The broader the support for the proposed changes, the more likely it will be that new legislation can also be enforced. This approach has clearly paid off in Saba in the long term. 

References

Strawbridge, J. and J. Sybesma. 1989. The Curacao Underwater Park Management Guide 1990-1995. STINAPA, Curacao Underwater Park.

Van't Hof, T and H. Cornet. 1983. Guide to the Curacao Underwater Park. STINAPA Doc. Ser. no. 12. Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. 

Van't Hof, T. 1985. Saba Marine Park. A proposal for integrated marine resource management in Saba. STINAPA, Curacao.

Van't Hof, T. 1987. Status of Marine Conservation in the Netherlands Antilles. In: Richardson, Q. and J. Sybesma, Eds. Proceedings of the Workshop Netherlands Antilles National Marine Program, 16-19 November, 1987, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles.
 

Fig. 1. Geographical location of the Netherlands Antilles
    and Aruba
 

Fig. 2. Bonaire Marine Park
 

Fig. 3. Curacao Underwater Park
 

Fig. 4. Saba Marine Park