NICE, France—Resolute about their efforts to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s global ocean by 2030, world leaders agreed to sweeping but nonbinding commitments at last week’s United Nations Ocean Conference to designate vast stretches of their territorial waters as marine protected areas.
These areas would cover hundreds to millions of square ocean miles and restrict or ban human activities to protect critical ecosystems such as coral reefs and conserve endangered species including manta rays, sharks and seabirds. The countries also want fish populations to recover from overfishing.
Currently, only about 8 percent of the world’s ocean has protection in some fashion, according to the Marine Conservation Institute, a Seattle-based nonprofit that tracks marine protected areas. Just under 3 percent is fully protected from extractive activities such as industrial fishing, mining or offshore oil and gas. At the five-day conference—the third U.N. gathering focused solely on the ocean—scientists repeatedly called for accelerated action.
“We can’t inch our way to 30×30. We must race,” said Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and founder of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project, which works with local communities to protect marine ecosystems. “We need to establish 85 new marine protected areas daily to achieve this goal,” he said in a statement in the final hours of the conference Friday.
Pacific nations announced some of the boldest commitments. Samoa will create nine marine protected areas that will collectively account for a section of the ocean roughly the size of Vietnam, while French Polynesia pledged to protect 350,000 square miles of its national waters. The governments of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu unveiled plans for the Melanesian Ocean Reserve, which would protect 2 million square miles, an area the size of the Amazon Rainforest. When complete, it would be the world’s first multi-national Indigenous-led marine reserve.
Beyond the Pacific, Colombia said it would protect about 2,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea as part of the new Serranilla and Bajo Nuevo marine protected area. The area will protect several remote coral atolls and species of deep sea sharks. Tanzania will designate reserves to protect seagrass beds and mangrove forests, which serve as natural storm and erosion barriers for its coastal communities.
Conservationists emphasized the hardest work lies ahead.
Lance Morgan, president of the Marine Conservation Institute, said countries must follow through on their commitments and implement and manage these proposed areas. “Biodiversity only benefits when these commitments translate to real changes on the water.”
“Essential for Planetary Health”
The “30×30” target was set in 2022 during a U.N. biodiversity conference in Montreal where 196 countries approved the plan known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for the protection of 30 percent of all ocean, land and freshwater. This year, 55 heads of state and government, along with 15,000 participants from civil society, business and science, attended the ocean conference and traded research over how best to integrate the ocean into national plans to address climate change and nature loss.
Their discussions will influence the much anticipated COP30—the next U.N. Conference of the Parties—in Brazil in November.
Scientists have warned that marine ecosystems have been collapsing for years. “The ocean and its biodiversity are essential for planetary health,” said Peter Haugan, an oceanographer and policy director at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, which receives partial funding from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries. “Yet its capacity to regulate the climate, provide food security and nutrition to billions, support cultural identity and sustain marine biodiversity is under growing and converging threats.
Haugan said the ocean’s life supporting functions are being “steadily and sometimes irreversibly eroded” by “warming, acidification and oxygen loss to plastic and chemical pollution.”
On Friday, more than 170 nations sought some unified political action by adopting a document “Our ocean, Our future: United for Urgent action” that lays out ways to decarbonize maritime transport and combat pollution. The document also emphasizes the importance of creating and expanding marine protected areas and financing conservation.
The “Spillover” Effect
Well-managed marine protected areas—often referred to as MPAs—function as underwater nurseries, giving fish safe places to spawn and grow. Harmful fishing practices such as bottom trawling continue to raze habitat in some areas that are supposed to be preserved. If species can live out of bounds of commercial fishing and grow to maturity, they can help other regions recover.
In areas where they safeguard seagrasses, mangroves and kelp forests, MPAs help to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Scientists emphasized how these coastal ecosystems have the capacity, through photosynthesis, to contain the greenhouse gas in their roots and in sediment.
A report commissioned by the Bloomberg Ocean Fund in partnership with ocean advocates has calculated that there are financial benefits to the U.N.’s 30 percent aim. Preventing property damage, maintaining seagrass to avoid the cost of carbon emission and reducing losses within the fishing industry as fish stocks decline could equal $85 billion a year in savings by 2050, the report said.
But robust financing is essential.
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Donate NowThe report said $15.8 billion a year is needed to support the 2030 plan. The money now available for marine protection? About $1.2 billion, according to the report.
The Nice conference sparked more funding promises. The European Commission announced a €1 billion ($1.15 billion) investment in ocean conservation, science and sustainable fishing. Brazil joined more than two dozen countries that pledged $4 billion to protect and restore 15 million hectares of mangroves by 2030.
The United Kingdom, New Zealand, France and Germany announced a combined $25 million for the Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR), a coalition that finances coral reef conservation. Warming ocean temperatures are causing the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record.
Another 18-member donor group called the Connect to Protect Coalition, has committed more than $165 million to protect a critical marine corridor, often referred to as CMAR, that passes through Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama. CMAR has grown in need as well as potential, according to donors. “Implementation requires some sustained funding,” said Patricia León, an associate director at the Bezos Earth Fund, a coalition member and philanthropy started in 2020 by the American billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Migratory Pathways Protected
CMAR was launched in 2004 as a voluntary accord between Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama to protect the hammerhead sharks, green sea turtles, humpback whales and other endangered species that pass through waters in and around the four countries. “Sharks don’t know where the barriers are of protected areas,” said Inti Keith, principal investigator for marine biodiversity research at the Charles Darwin Foundation in the Galapagos.
Warmer marine temperatures are also affecting coral reefs in the region so it is critical for countries to share data and cooperate in conservation efforts, Keith said.
Twenty years ago, CMAR included five marine protected zones. Today, it accounts for 10 protected areas, four of which are UNESCO Natural Heritage Sites, including the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador, Cocos Island National Park in Costa Rica, Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary in Colombia and Coiba National Park in Panama.
Shirley Binder, a senior officer at Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy, said the transboundary network of marine protected areas covers more than 200,000 square miles.
The Galápagos and Hermandad reserves in Ecuador now use satellite tracking and rapid-deployment patrol craft to intercept illegal fishing activity, according to the Bezos Earth Fund. Soon, CMAR countries will also develop a legally binding agreement that would help countries better coordinate, monitor and govern the corridor, Binder said. The hope is that the vast marine expanse would eventually be recognized as UNESCO’s first transboundary marine biosphere reserve, she said.
For now, countries are creating strategic documents with clear plans to conserve particular ecosystems or species, support sustainable fisheries, and safeguard cultural heritage. These plans typically include zoning regulations, rules for permitted and prohibited activities, systems for monitoring and enforcement, and ways to engage people who live and work near or in the marine corridor. Managing goals is key, Binder said.
“There’s still some areas in CMAR that don’t have either a management plan or a fishery management plan,” she said, and that could fray the protection effort.
León emphasized that CMAR’s track record over the past two decades is proof, however, that governments, scientists and donors can effectively collaborate to help the ocean.
“We’re not speaking about a promise. We’re speaking about something that was promised and has been delivered,” León said. “Protection is a long-term goal, but we have good news for the world, and I think we need more of that good news.”
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Teresa Tomassoni
Oceans Correspondent
Teresa Tomassoni is an environmental journalist covering the intersections between oceans, climate change, coastal communities and wildlife for Inside Climate News. Her previous work has appeared in The Washington Post, NPR, NBC Latino and the Smithsonian American Indian Magazine. Teresa holds a master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is also a recipient of the Stone & Holt Weeks Social Justice Reporting Fellowship. She has taught journalism for Long Island University and the School of the New York Times. She is an avid scuba diver and spends much of her free time underwater.
