What makes West African coastal and marine protected areas original is chiefly that their conceptual framework, objectives and conservation practices draw on international models. National laws thus appear as legal acts geared to implementing international commitments. Imported international guidelines and goals are relayed to local level by a "co-administration system" in which the regulatory state cooperates with a similarly "imported" civil society (international scientific networks, big environmental NGOs, and so on). CMPAs are legally defined as special administrative policing arrangements, implemented by an administration drawing on the colonial model. It is the outline laws bringing an CMPA into being that will mainstream the conservation and development principles agreed at international level. Two characteristic features emerge from their founding documents: the creation, within national borders, of circumscription of exception where special measures encroach on individual and property rights), and the establishment of institutions whose police powers will alter the normal administrative functioning of those districts. These institutions join the ranks of existing local communities and local government authorities. CMPA boundary-setting - both geographical (zoning) and administrative (circumscription) - falls within the purely political jurisdiction of the government (enacted by legislative decree). The main aim of an MCPA remains the protection of the natural environment, although the priorities have evolved since the introduction of the concept of sustainability and the fostering of grass-roots participation in the protection process, largely through the "biospheric" approach.
CMPAs are marked by highly complex administrative and regulatory processes. Only the Banc d'Arguin National Park (PNBA) offers some clarity, reflected in a standard, area-wide, legal system. The far more densely populated Delta du Saloum Biosphere Reserve (RBDS) is based on a zoning scheme geared to determining two distinct areas (Delta du Saloum National Park and the theoretically "highly protected" forests of the surrounding RBDS). Zoning in the Bolama-Bijagos Biosphere Reserve (RBABB) is quite complex, featuring a large number of special areas with their own legal regimes: national parks, ecological sanctuaries, sacred forests, restoration areas. Analysis of compliance with CMPA-related norms has failed to grasp the true extent of the state's authority (control of activities and access, identifying infringements, legal action, rulings, penalties, fines, precedent-setting, etc.). The systems seem to favour negotiations and preventive action, not least because the means available to the managing authorities are especially weak and a strain on management efficiency.
There are many differences in the institutional arrangements for the management of CMPAs: the PNBA is structured by an independent body responsible for management policy-making; the RBDS is marked by inextricable institutional "superposition", cumbersome red tape and the absence of a coordinating body capable of defining policy and controlling the many existing grass-roots policies and initiatives; in the RBABB the state plays a relatively unobtrusive role, leaving an international NGO network to manage the reserve in partnership with traditional community leaders.
The legal classification of these protected areas ultimately leads to an acknowledgement of their specific characteristics: state control over the areas (at the levels of standard-setting and administration) coexists with a great variety of traditional legal orders that govern access to the resources. It is a "syncretic" legal system where the state negotiates with civil society to achieve certain objectives (the resurgence of tribal rules in the PNBA; the sharing of jurisdiction and powers, owing to a "multiplicity of legal benchmarks", in the RBDS; and the validation of grass-roots empowerment in the absence of a proactive state in the RBABB).
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