But questions are being raised. The growth has been driven by the formation of giant MPAs<\/span> bigger than many countries, often in remote regions where the threat to biodiversity is lower. So, critics are asking, are countries creating big distant MPAs<\/span> to distract attention from the harder task of protecting trashed coastal ecosystems closer to home? And is there a geopolitical game afoot, a stealth rush to control the oceans for political ends? And does that explain why half of the ocean waters covered by MPAs<\/span> are in the hands of the United States and two former European colonial powers, Britain and France?<\/p>\n Most ocean scientists see the rush to create vast MPAs<\/span> as a boon to marine conservation. They are cost effective, connect different marine ecosystems and encompass larger parts of the ranges of migrating species such as whales and tuna, protecting \u201ccorridors of connectivity among habitats in ways not afforded by smaller MPAs<\/span>\u201d says Bethan<\/span> O\u2019Leary, a marine scientist at the University of York in the United Kingdom.<\/strong><\/p>\n But the geography of the new large MPAs<\/span> seems to reflect politics as well as ecology. The biggest American MPAs<\/span> are in the 200 nautical mile (370 kilometre) internationally recognised exclusive economic zones (EEZs<\/span>) off Alaska and around the Hawaiian archipelago. And France and Britain are busy asserting their control over wide stretches of oceans in EEZs<\/span> around tiny islands that they hung onto at the close of the European colonial era.<\/p>\n Britain has fully protected less than only 2.9 square miles (7.5 square kilometres) of its domestic waters, but has promised 1.5 million square miles (3.88 million square kilometres) of \u201cenhanced marine protection\u201d around its territories in remote oceans by 2020. That is more than 16 times the size of the UK itself. The waters earmarked include three of the 12 largest MPAs<\/span> declared to date: around the Chagos<\/span> Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, Pitcairn Island in the Pacific and South Georgia in the Southern Ocean, to be followed by Ascension Island, St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha<\/span>, all in the South Atlantic.<\/p>\n France is not far behind,\u00a0promising<\/a>\u00a0850,000 square miles (2.2 million square kilometres) by 2020, including waters around New Caledonia and French Polynesia, as well as Reunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n These giant MPAs<\/span> are a relatively new phenomenon. Most have been created since 2010, when the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted its 10% target. Until then most were small, and about half of the world\u2019s 15,000 MPAs<\/span> still measure only a few square kilometres. <\/div><\/p>\n But the case to go big has been growing. While small safe spaces for nature may protect particular habitats like coral reefs and sea grasses, their impact on wider marine ecosystems and migrating fish stocks is bound to be small, marine ecologists argue. Partly because of this, and partly through bad design and poor enforcement,\u00a0a recent meta-analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the impacts of existing MPAs<\/span> by Graham Edgar, a senior research scientist at the University of Tasmania, found that \u201cmost of the MPAs<\/span> studied\u2026 were not ecologically distinguishable from fished sites\u201d.<\/p>\n Some scientists also say that with coastal MPAs<\/span>, local fishers often lose out. Their livelihoods are disrupted as their fishing activities are declared illegal, while big commercial fishers just move on and damage somewhere else. There\u00a0have been calls<\/a>\u00a0for codes of conduct to protect such communities. Nathan Bennett, an ocean geographer at the University of British Columbia, said in a\u00a0Yale Environment 360<\/em><\/a> interview two years ago that protecting the interests of coastal communities could \u201cmake the difference between the success and failure of marine conservation\u201d.<\/p>\n So will large MPAs<\/span> do better? Most are in remote, near-pristine areas with lots of marine life to save. The US\u2019s Papah\u0101naumoku\u0101kea<\/span> Marine National Monument in the Hawaiian archipelago, for instance, is more than twice the size of Texas and supports 7,000 species, a quarter of them endemic. The 250,000 square mile (647,497 square kilometre) MPA declared by the British around the Chagos<\/span> archipelago in the Indian Ocean is \u201cthe world\u2019s largest contiguous undamaged [coral] reef area\u201d,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the former chief scientific advisor for the area, Charles Sheppard of Warwick University. It includes the largest atoll in the world, the Great Chagos<\/span> Bank, and has 310 species of coral, 821 of fish (including 50 shark species) and 355 of molluscs. The MPA there has created the world\u2019s largest \u201cno-take\u201d zone, where all commercial fishing is banned.<\/p>\n But some say the progress on protecting the oceans this way has been hyped. Enric<\/span> Sala<\/span>, a marine ecologist at the National Geographic Society,\u00a0recently called<\/a>\u00a0the claim to be close to achieving protection for 10% of the world\u2019s oceans \u201cfalse and counterproductive\u201d. While 7% of the oceans have so far been earmarked for some protection, only 5% have actually had plans implemented and only 2% ban commercial fishing.<\/p>\n Among MPAs<\/span> where commitments remain unimplemented, Sala<\/span> notes, two of the biggest are New Zealand\u2019s Kermadec<\/span> Ocean Sanctuary and French New Caledonia\u2019s Coral Sea Nature Park. And when the departing Bush administration in 2009 created the Marianas Trench National Marine Monument near the US territory of Guam in the western Pacific, it ceded to pressure from the Northern Mariana Islands to allow fishers to continue their activities there.<\/p>\n But O\u2019Leary says most designated large MPAs<\/span> have management plans either in place or in preparation, and the development of drone, radar and satellite technology will make them easier to police than in the past. <\/div><\/p>\n A second concern of critics is that the massive coverage of MPAs<\/span> may not be addressing the urgent task of protecting marine species and ecosystems from real and current threats.<\/p>\n Most large MPAs<\/span> are in remote areas. The US, for instance, has instituted strong or full protections in less than 1% of seas in its waters around the continental US, compared with 43% in remote waters, according to a\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0that O\u2019Leary co-authored.<\/p>\n Luiz<\/span> Rocha<\/span> of Hope for Reefs, a campaigning initiative of the California Academy of Sciences, says large remote MPAs<\/span> \u201cinvariably exclude the only areas that would benefit from spatial protection, those close to the shore. They protect areas that nobody uses, and that changes nothing.\u201d In fact, it is worse than nothing, he argues, because by allowing countries to hit UN targets, these remote MPA\u2019s<\/span> reduce the pressure to provide real protection where it is needed.<\/p>\n Even bigness provides few benefits, Rocha<\/span> contends. \u201cThe media and the public love announcement of reserves \u2018the size of Belgium\u2019, but for species like tuna, the size of Belgium is like the size of your backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n But O\u2019Leary and other advocates for large MPAs<\/span> counter that big protected areas provide more protection for migrating species than small areas. And even if they don\u2019t counter urgent current threats, O\u2019Leary says, they do provide \u201cproactive protection of ocean wilderness areas against future exploitation\u201d in the same way as protected terrestrial wildernesses.<\/p>\n Some critics charge that many big MPAs<\/span> are as much about geopolitics as conservation. This particularly applies to the post-colonial MPAs<\/span> of Britain and France, in which tiny, sometimes unpopulated, mid-ocean islands once occupied as refuelling stops for naval vessels, become the twenty-first century basis for what some are calling \u201cocean grab\u201d. Britain has declared an MPA around South Georgia, which is claimed by Argentina, and, just as controversially, has also done so around the Chagos<\/span> archipelago in the mid-Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n In colonial times, the archipelago was administered by Britain from adjacent Mauritius. However, in 1965, three years before granting independence to Mauritius, the British separated it off and signed a deal with the US for a major American military base on the largest of its 60 islands, Diego Garcia. As part of the deal, the British subsequently forcibly removed\u00a0some 1,500 Chagossians<\/a>. Living in exile in Mauritius and the UK, they have been campaigning to be allowed to return and resume economic activities such as fishing.<\/p>\n That was made more difficult when in 2010, Britain created a giant \u201cno-take\u201d MPA around the archipelago, excluding only Diego Garcia. A message from the US Embassy\u00a0unearthed and published<\/a>\u00a0by Wikileaks, said British officials had said that \u201cestablishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims\u201d. The British government has repeatedly denied any such motive.<\/p>\n Things came to a head last month when, after decades of legal dispute, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the UN\u2019s highest court, declared British control of the Chagos<\/span> to be a \u201cwrongful act\u201d. The islands, including the MPA, should be handed back to Mauritius \u201cas rapidly as possible\u201d, the court ruled.<\/p>\n It is far from clear if the British government will accede to this demand. Mauritius\u2019 London embassy did not respond to requests to clarify its plans for the MPA. But in the past it has said that while it had no problem maintaining an MPA, a no-take zone would \u201cnot be compatible<\/a>\u201d with its plans for returning Chagossians<\/span> and exploiting marine resources.<\/p>\n Whatever the future for such contested waters, the bigger prize of saving oceans remains. Scientists have argued that the world should aim to protect not 10%, but 30% of the oceans. That would require concerted international efforts to protect the two-thirds of the oceans that lie outside national EEZs<\/span>. <\/div><\/p>\n Just 0.5% of these \u201chigh seas\u201d are currently covered by MPAs<\/span>. These are in areas covered by regional or international treaties. The largest is the Ross Sea MPA off the coast of Antarctica, which covers an area almost the size of Alaska and is one of the world\u2019s most productive marine ecosystems, though concerns have mounted because of a krill fishery allowed there under the terms of the Antarctica Treaty. Others include the\u00a0Charlie-Gibbs MPA<\/a>, a biodiversity hotspot in the mid-north Atlantic where polar and tropical waters meet. It is managed by the Ospar Convention on the north-east Atlantic marine environment.<\/a><\/p>\n But many more may be established if the UN finalises a new High Sea Treaty on schedule in 2020. Talks on the treaty were scheduled to resume in New York in March. Its provisions will almost certainly include creating MPAs<\/span> in international waters. Candidates include the Sargasso Sea, a zone of sluggish waters in the north Atlantic off the British territory of Bermuda that is full of floating seaweed among which both American and European eels breed.<\/p>\n The question then becomes who will fund and manage MPAs<\/span> on the high seas. The moving forces behind them will likely be the same as those that helped trigger the recent spurt of large national MPAs<\/span>: American and other conservation groups backed by private philanthropists.<\/p>\n Conservation International helped mastermind the French MPA around New Caledonia. The Switzerland based Bertarelli<\/span> Foundation\u00a0helped establish<\/a>\u00a0those around French Polynesia and Chile\u2019s Easter Island. In the Seychelles, The Nature Conservancy raised money from US philanthropists, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio<\/span>, to buy up national debt<\/a> in return for the creation of two large marine reserves. The Louis Bacon Foundation, established by a US hedge fund manager, is to pay for policing a British MPA around Ascension Island.<\/p>\n Biggest of all is the Pew Charitable Trusts, which\u00a0says it has already<\/a>\u00a0\u201chelped safeguard 5.2 million square kilometres \u2013 an area 10 times the size of Central America\u201d. Pew first proposed and helped fund British MPAs<\/span> at Chagos<\/span> and Pitcairn, as well as pushing for US initiatives such as the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. In a joint initiative with the Bertarelli<\/span> Foundation, Pew\u00a0recently appointed<\/a>\u00a0former US Secretary of State John Kerry and former British Prime Minister David Cameron as \u201cocean ambassadors\u201d.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Karan<\/span>, a senior manager at Pew, said in an email interview that her organisation<\/span> is helping \u201cidentify important areas for biodiversity on the high seas, and work[ing] with governments [to] develop proposals\u201d. Policing of these non-national MPAs<\/span> would be done by treaty signatories regulating their industries.<\/p>\n Some see such philanthropists as planetary saviours; others as agents of a creeping privatisation of one of the\u00a0last great global commons<\/a>. Either way, it is a big task.<\/p>\n This article was first published in <\/em>Yale E360<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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