Ocean protection quality is lagging behind quantity: Applying a scientific framework to assess real marine protected area progress against the 30 by 30 target

The international community set a global conservation target to protect at least30% of the ocean by 2030 (“30 × 30”) to reverse biodiversity loss, includingthrough marine protected areas (MPAs). However, varied MPAs result in sig-nificantly different conservation outcomes, making MPA coverage alone aninadequate metric. We used The MPA Guide framework to assess the the world’slargest 100 MPAs by area, representing nearly 90% of reported global MPA cov-erage and 7.3% of the global ocean area, and analyzed the distribution of MPAquality across political and ecological regions. A quarter of the assessed MPAcoverage is not implemented, and one-third is incompatible with the conserva-tion of nature. Two factors contribute to this outcome: (1) many reported MPAslack regulations or management, and (2) some MPAs allow high-impact activi-ties. Fully and highly protected MPAs account for one-third of the assessed areabut are unevenly distributed across ecoregions in part because some nations havedesignated large, highly protected MPAs in their overseas or remote territories.Indicators of MPA quality, not only coverage, are needed to ensure a global net-work of MPAs that covers at least 30% of the ocean and effectively safeguardsrepresentative marine ecosystems from destructive human activities

Keywords

30x30 MPA quality Marine protected areas Conservation outcomes Assessment Decision tree Level of protection Marine conservation

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/9803

Citation

Pike, E. P., MacCarthy, J. M. C., Hameed, S. O., Harasta, N., Grorud, C. K., Sullivan, S. J., Claudet, J., Horta e Costa, B., Gonçalves, E. J., Villagomez, A., & Morgan, L. (2024). Ocean protection quality is lagging behind quantity: Applying a scientific framework to assess real marine protected area progress against the 30 by 30 target. Conservation Letters, 1. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.13020