In December 2022, representatives from nearly 200 countries around the world celebrated in Montreal. At the UN’s COP15 biodiversity talks, they had agreed a comprehensive framework to halt and reverse nature loss, including the target of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030.
Amidst headlines about the dual crisis of climate change and disappearing biodiversity, this was a real breakthrough – for nature, but also for people.
Two and a half years later, the world is already off track.
Only 8.3% of the ocean is protected – 0.5% more than when the deal was agreed. At the current trajectory, only 9.7% of the ocean will be protected by 2030. And loose regulations and enforcement mean that many of the so-called protected areas that contribute to that number are vulnerable to destructive activities including bottom trawling.
In fact, less than 3% of the ocean is fully protected from damage caused by human activity.
The consequences of failing to protect the ocean quickly enough are grave, especially for the communities who depend on the sea for food and livelihoods. Worldwide, 113 million people, most of whom are in the Global South, depend on small-scale fisheries, most of which are in coastal waters, for food and incomes. Failure to protect coastal areas puts their food security and livelihoods at risk, with fishers having to go further and for longer periods of time to catch enough to meet their needs.
Communities themselves are now sounding the alarm. In Indonesia, members of the Indonesia Traditional Fisherfolk Union have studied and monitored illegal bottom trawling activities in their waterways and raised awareness among communities and decisionmakers. In the Philippines, small-scale fishers are asking the highest court in the country to protect municipal waters from commercial fishing. And in Honduras, local municipalities and fishing communities have asked the government to reserve the first 12 nautical miles from shore for artisanal fishing.
Protecting coastal waters effectively – and doing so quickly – will put us back on course to achieving 30×30, while also throwing a lifeline to small-scale fishers. Research shows that we need to establish approximately 190,000 small marine protected areas (MPAs) in coastal regions alone, and an additional 300 large MPAs in remote, offshore areas globally by the end of 2030 to meet the 30% target that year. That is about 85 MPAs a day.
A marine protected area is a defined zone of water under some kind of human-activity management.
MPAs range from highly protected reserves where people are almost entirely excluded, to areas where some activities such as fishing are allowed but others such as oil drilling are not. This has led to concerns that inconsistent use of the term is causing confusion and giving a misleading impression of the proportion of the ocean that is actually protected.
Efforts are already underway to enable and equip local communities to create as many local MPAs as possible. In the roughly 2,000 local communities across eight countries where my organisation Rare operates, I have seen what happens when protected areas are combined with sustainable fishing practices. Time and time again, communities see their coastal waters recover and their economies thrive.
This is how it works. A community designates an area of the ocean as highly protected – called a no-take zone. All extractive activities are banned in the area – from fishing and mining to drilling and dredging. In the surrounding areas where fishing is allowed, everyone works together to agree who gets to fish and how.
Again and again, we have found that when local people have priority rights to fish in their waters, and industrial fishing isn’t allowed, they are more likely to fish more sustainably because they feel a greater sense of ownership. They fish in the right places, use the right gear, and cooperate with each other to avoid overfishing.
Giving mayors and their communities the power to design and declare locally managed MPAs can speed up the establishment of protected areas
The rewards for these efforts are clear. In some of our sites in the Philippines, for example, the communities co-managing their coastal waters have seen fish biomass inside their no-take reserves double within five years on average.
Fishers have also reported increased catch in areas outside the no-take zones. This happens almost everywhere.
So if MPAs are so helpful to local communities, why aren’t there more of them?
Right now, MPAs are mostly overseen by national governments. But these governments are often far out of touch with remote, rural coastal communities. Local governments can be the solution.
Giving mayors and their communities the power to design and declare locally managed MPAs can speed up the establishment of protected areas. And they can do so in a way that reflects the needs of the local communities, ensuring that they can sustain enforcement and management over time. In Honduras, mayors have helped community associations secure national funds to manage newly declared MPAs.
In June, leaders from around the world will gather in Nice, France for the United Nations Ocean Conference. While many nations will be thinking big about how to save the ocean, it is important to remember that small MPAs are one of the most powerful solutions available.
