Extinction .in

Marine Protected Areas increase 10-fold in a decade

 

 
The reserve around the Chagos islands is the world's largest, protecting a notoriously rich ecosystem.

A 10-fold rise in Marine Protected Areas has been recorded over a decade.

A report to a in Hyderabad reports that more than 8.3 million sq km - 2.3% of the global ocean area - is now protected.

The percentage is small but the rapid growth in recent times leads to hope

that the world will hit its target of 10% protected by 2020.

This would have looked most unlikely prospect just a few years ago.

The aspiration was agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2004

with a target date of 2012. Progress was so slow at first that the target was

slipped to 2020 - with some researchers forecasting it would not be reached

until mid-century.

But recently there have been huge additions - like Marine Protected Areas

(MPAs) in the UK-controlled Chagos archipelago and US-controlled uninhabited

territories in the mid-Pacific.

The Cook Islands recently announced a 1.1 million sq km MPA - that is four

times the area of the UK land mass. New Caledonia's is even bigger - 1.4 million

sq km.

Australia has added a further 2.7 million sq km to its listing of the Great

Barrier Reef. Now 28 countries have designated MPAs.

But these statistics may not be quite so impressive as they appear as most of

them are far distant from people who would be likely to over-exploit them.

And a recent paper on the demise of the Barrier Reef demonstrates that

declaring an area protected does not necessarily shield it from distant

influences like over-nutrification.

Mark Spalding from the Nature Conservancy, lead author of the report, told

BBC News: "This is great news in the sense that the prospect looked so hopeless

until recently. We really should manage to meet the 10% target now.

"But we have to ask whether the targets in themselves are enough - or whether

governments need to be smarter to ensure that they're protecting the very most

important areas.

"I don't want to knock any of the MPAs but some appear to be easy wins, where

you could stick a pin on a map and maybe send a patrol vessel. We need more than

that."

Dr Spalding said it was vital now for nations to concentrate efforts on MPAs

near heavily-populated coastlines where marine resources were most at risk.

The UK government has been accused of dragging its feet after postponing by a

year the introduction of MPAs around the coast of England.