Climate change
For global oceans governance to be improved, the concept of climate
change and the potential impacts on the environment needs to be accepted
as a critical focus for nation states. Sustainable approaches to ocean
and marine resources management cannot work without some effort being
placed into combatting the sources of climate change. Fisheries have
been highly impacted by climate change through biodiversity
redistribution (Pecl et al. 2017). Further evidence suggests that
fisheries productivity will decline in response to climate change
throughout most of the world’s oceans (Cheung et al. 2010). Establishing
a global networks of MPAs that span biogeographic regions and include a
series of MPAs with multiple ecosystems (inshore, nearshore, deep sea)
and be linked to adjacent MPAs by larval dispersal and protect
accessible habitats to which adults move (across depth gradients and
latitudes) are essential to promote ecological spatial connectivity, by
protecting the feeding, breeding and migration areas for transient
species. A global network of MPAs with their full component of trophic
levels and greater genetic and species diversity, are likely to be more
resilient to climate change and could be essential tools in climate
adaptation (Smith 2020).