The Babitonga Bay is the southernmost large mangrove ecosystem in the subtropical Atlantic (Brazil). It is surrounded by six coastal cities with one million coastal citizens in the largest metropolitan region of Santa Catarina state. Babitonga has been listed in eight Federal Decrees by the Ministry of Environment attributing national ecological relevance to this region. This coastal-marine area is also intensively used by over 1,700 fishers, has two large active ports and about another seven currently pursuing environmental licensing. Mining, aquaculture and tourism are also present so that social conflicts and ecological degradation have ensued.

Since 2005, attempts to designate an MPA by the Federal Government have been frustrated, largely because of a only top-down approach. In 2010, a company was fined for spilling 116.5 thousand litres of oil in the bay, and the money is currently being applied by the Public Ministry and Federal Court of Justice to improve the environmental governance of the region. Since early 2015, these state organizations are in partnership with the regional University of Joinville (Univille) and the Sea Memories Collective to facilitate the co-design of a new governance system for the Babitonga ecosystem (www.babitongaativa.com). This is done through an ecosystems-based project that combines transdisciplinary marine social-ecological systems science, an ambitious level of social participation and very clear policy goals. In its first 24 months, the project has been regularly engaged with about 400 direct resource users in several interrelated activities, including dozens of MSP workshops, and a ten-month transdisciplinary course on ecosystem stewardship (ecocidadania in Portuguese) to build core-groups of concerned citizens in each of the 6 cities (including community leaders and school teachers). These activities aimed to engage people with current and novel coastal and marine policies and decision-making platforms.

The project Babitonga Ativa thus coordinates various governmental and societal organizations in the co-design of new governance structures, as part of a bottom-up and inclusive regional MSP process, which is likely to include an MPA. The Bays most critical ecosystem services are being spatially located and valued to guide the negotiation of trade-offs in collective planning and zoning. The project was invited by the Federal government licensing authority to help merge several environmental monitoring programs for the ports of the Bay into one coherent ecosystems-based monitoring proposal.

In future years, this may also lead to the first marine protected area ever formally designated in Brazil with an operating management council and a management plan are already in place. The management council election was held in may 2017 and now a group of 28 private, public and civil society institutions will be launching the co-design of novel instruments for coastal-marine governance, including a financial mechanism to safeguard the long-term sustainability of this transformational enterprise.