Conceicao, R.A.; Suman, D.O.; Soares, M.L.G., 2020. Weaknesses and strengths in Marine Protected Areas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: A glance to community-management. In: Malvárez, G. and Navas, F. (eds.), Global Coastal Issues of 2020. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 95, pp. 738-742. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Participatory institutions (PIs) are essential to endorse democracy in PAs (Protected Areas). In this perspective the objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of the councils of marine and coastal PAs in the state of Rio de Janeiro, through the development and adaptation of an Effective Participation Index (EPI). The synthetic index was produced from the three variables at three analytical levels: L1-Institutionalization, L2-Deliberation and L3-Representation. In general terms, the data show that the EPI acquires better scores in the marine and coastal protected areas of greater structure and resources. In the disaggregated analysis, it was verified that the level of the best performance of the EPI was the institutionalization, followed by deliberation and representation, in that order.