This piece comes to us from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of THIRTEEN Productions LLC/The WNET Group.
Our global oceans and the ecosystems they support are critical for regulating life as we know it on our planet. The ocean absorbs 30 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide, in addition to providing food and livelihoods for more than three billion people worldwide. Yet actions to achieve sustainable management of the world’s oceans are significantly underfunded.
This week in Colombia, governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, donors and business leaders are seeking consensus on how to conserve nature, including our global oceans, at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Guiding these negotiations is the CBD’s ambitious Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
WCS scientists monitor a climate-resilient coral reef near Vatu i Ra in Fiji. Photo credit: Tom Vierus ©WCS.
With four long-term Goals to 2050 and 23 Targets by 2030, the GBF sets a path for a world where people are living in harmony with nature so that “biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.” We are excited by the opportunity to move the needle on new funding for the planet’s ocean and coastal ecosystems.
Since the GBF was endorsed at the last CBD COP in late 2022, most of the attention and funding has been given to Target 3, or the “30×30” target, which calls for the effective and equitable protection of 30 percent the world’s land and seas by 2030. In the oceans, this has kickstarted a race for designation of marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective forms of area-based management, both in areas within national jurisdictions and outside of them (the “High Seas”).
However, this focus can lead to short-sighted gains if success is only defined as the number of square kilometers under management or percent of the ocean protected. Are these the right measures of success? On their own, we argue no.
A healthy reef borders shallow underwater seagrass meadows in Northern Mozambique. Photo credit: Luca Crudelli ©WCS.
First, a race to protect the most area inevitably prioritizes the easiest areas to designate—often without proper consultation by traditional owners or stakeholders. Avoiding such “ocean grabbing” requires thoughtful and inclusive marine spatial planning processes that recognize that some areas are more important than others for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. It is precisely those areas that should be prioritized for management.
Places that have high ecological integrity (e.g., high biodiversity tropical coral reefs or high productivity coastal upwelling zones of whales, sardine runs, and seabirds) or where ecological integrity can be restored offer the best opportunity for continuous provision of ocean services through future climate shocks.
Management of these spaces should be innovative and aligned with local needs and values. For example, small-scale fisher organizations from six continents have recently raised a call to action to secure preferential access to—and co-management of— coastal areas so that they can continue contributing to economies, health, culture, and wellbeing.
Unless we secure seascapes in the right places, we could easily end up with the wrong 30 percent protection that does little to protect biodiversity, sustain a healthy planet, and deliver crucial ocean services.
A community marks a local MPA in Roviana, Solomon Islands. Photo credit: Björn Svensson ©WCS.
Second, the number of square kilometers managed tells you nothing about the equity or effectiveness of that management. In the race to meet area-based targets, there needs to be more accountability and transparency to ensure that processes to establish new managed areas follow human rights-based and inclusive approaches and the costs and benefits of management are distributed equitably, particularly for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
To ensure effectiveness, significant investments into long-term monitoring are needed to ensure that protected and conserved areas meet their biodiversity goals. Moreover, we can’t neglect the urgent need to invest in the effective governance and operations of existing marine managed areas to ensure they do not become “paper parks” that exist on maps but do not achieve their ostensible purpose.
Third, MPAs and other managed areas cannot succeed in isolation. Rather they must be a part of more broadly managed seascapes where sustainable use is both enabled and properly regulated, where the impacts of climate change are minimized, where other threats such as pollution are effectively controlled, and where gender quality and gender-responsive plans are prioritized.
To achieve long-term success for the 30×30 target, we must also prioritize the other 22 important targets within the GBF as they relate to sustainable ocean management, including climate-smart marine spatial planning, restoration of ecological integrity, control of invasive species, prevention of species extinction, promotion of sustainable use through policies that regulate harvest and control trade, and actions that mitigate pollution risk, among others.
A local fisher showing catch from a traditional basket trap near Moa, Tanzania. Photo credit: WCS ©Pie Aerts.
What are the right measures of success? To hold ourselves accountable, we need to track measures of the outcomes we desire, namely protected biodiversity and secured ecosystems functions and services that underpin thriving human well-being.
Success will not be achieved if global financing falls short. By some accounts, the oceans need $175 billion per year to achieve sustainable ocean management by 2030. Given that only $10 billion in total was invested between 2015 and 2019, urgent and coordinated investment is required to extend beyond Target 3’s goal of 30 percent ocean protection to finance a broader suite of holistic and necessary actions to achieve these outcomes.
In short, without critical investments to all targets of the GBF, the guiding vision of a nature-positive future is in jeopardy. We hope that the CBD parties in Cali this week leave Colombia having made real progress on this important goal.
