UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2020).
The percentage of global MPA coverage targets is set to increase. In 2016 the World Conservation Congress (WCC) called upon the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to promote and support a number of recommendations, one of which is to ‘designate and implement at least 30 percent of each marine habitat in a network of highly protected MPAs’ by 2030 (WCC 2016). In Sections 5 and 6 we use this governance ambition as a guide to constructing both the ‘Business-as-usual’ scenario and the ‘More Sustainable’ future scenarios. Whilst hypothetical, we predict the likelihood of both scenarios in meeting the goal of designating 30% of the World’s oceans as MPAs.
Defining exactly what constitutes a MPA is extremely important in order to measure and track MPA coverage against the Aichi Target 11 and SDG 14.5. Views over what constitutes a MPA have varied and there has also been confusion over the difference between the two terms ‘protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures’ (Smith 2020). A MPA is defined as:
a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated, and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values’ (Day et al. 2019).
The key principle of a MPA is that only those sites with the main goal of conservation should be considered protected areas, and fall within the above definition of a MPA (IUCN WCPA 2018). The term MPA is so all-encompassing that it describes a large array of levels of protection. The IUCN categories of Protected Areas effectively delineate types of Protected Areas by management objectives and governance (Dudley 2008). To further simplify this, a recently published MPA guide has categorised four levels of MPA protection: fully protected, highly protected, lightly protected and minimally protected (Oregon State University, IUCN, MCI, National Geographic Society, and UNEP WCMC, 2019).
While marine environmental protection has become an important focus for governments at all scales, the development and implementation of MPAs is often highly contested. Such initiatives are opposed because they are seen as limiting or constraining existing extractive uses of the ocean, or resource users from exploiting these areas under the MPA. In theSection 4 we identify the key drivers based on the importance to MPA formation/performance and also their connection to fairness concerns.
We identified a number of drivers of change (see Appendix A)and from this list we identified six key drivers of change that are integral to successfully establishing of a global network of MPAs.Figure 2 illustrates our six key drivers and shows the linkages between relevant SDGs.