Guiding stakeholder negotiations in data-poor coastal planning with open-access spatial data.

Negotiating conservation priorities in highly anthropic ecosystems requires approaches that promote cooperation and cost bargaining among stakeholders. In data-poor contexts, such negotiations are hindered by limited information and conflicting interests. We developed a transparent and reproducible prioritization framework, combining open-access satellite imagery with a decision-support tool, to inform participatory coastal planning. Although illustrated in northeast Brazil, a data-poor region where coastal conflicts between tourism and fisheries are acute, the framework was designed to be broadly applicable to similar coastal social-ecological systems. It generates visualizations that help stakeholders explore trade-offs in three dimensions: defining a conservation target; debating the location of coastal candidate areas that balance habitat protection with minimizing impacts on tourism and fishing activities; and deliberating the degree of restriction within each candidate area based on conservation and socioeconomic considerations. We applied this approach to design five alternative spatial planning scenarios. Three were based on composite tourism and fisheries indices ("neutral", "avoid fisheries areas", and "avoid tourism areas"), and two focused on specific practices ("all specific activities" and "do not exclude small-scale"). These scenarios revealed where restrictions can be applied or relaxed to achieve conservation objectives while maintaining essential local livelihoods. By highlighting the limitations of existing conservation units and promoting inclusive, transparent decision-making, our method provides a practical means to focus stakeholder negotiations. More broadly, the framework offers a scalable and transferable approach for equitable, multisectoral conservation planning in other data-poor coastal regions facing similar trade-offs.