Opinion piece: Marine protected areas and the high tide for change

Peter Thomson, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean

Peter Thomson was Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2010 to 2016, and served as president of the UN General Assembly in 2016-17. In 2014 he was president of the executive board of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Office of Project Services. Ambassador Thomson was previously president of the Assembly and Council of the International Seabed Authority. In 2017 he became the first United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, in which role he drives implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda’s goal to conserve and sustainably use the resources of the ocean.

Surely, only a very contrary mindset would lead anyone to deny the utility of marine protected areas (MPAs). Facing the triple global crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, it is as clear as day that the best interests of our own well-being lie in giving the ocean all the help it needs. The ocean is acidifying and warming at exponential rates, dead zones are proliferating, sea levels are rising, and coral is dying. There can be no healthy planet without a healthy ocean, so we have work to do.

MPAs are one of the best policy instruments we have devised to conserve and sustainably use the ocean’s resources. While we depend on the ocean for food, for oxygen, for carbon sequestration and, increasingly, for renewable energy and medicines, we continue to overfish it, indulge in harmful fishing practices and pollute it with oil, plastics, chemicals and run-offs from our agricultural and industrial activities. MPAs help us curb these detrimental activities within legally prescribed expanses of coast and ocean, providing sanctuaries for marine biodiversity as it struggles to cope with humankind’s excesses.

The Convention on Biological Diversity talks about marine and coastal protected areas, describing them as any defined area within or adjacent to the marine environment, which has been reserved by legislation or other effective means, including custom, with the effect that its biodiversity enjoys a higher level of protection than that of its surroundings. This broad coverage strikes me as wise, since everything is connected and one of the most important principles governing the health of marine ecosystems is the source-to-sea ethos. An MPA cannot function if an adjoining drainage system, be it man-made or natural, is pumping pollutants into it.

Sustainable Development Goal 14.5 called for 10% of coastal and marine areas to be conserved by 2020. We came close but did not hit that target. And then in 2022, the community of nations agreed to the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, within which is the target of effective protection and management of 30% of the world's terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas by the year 2030. Again I say, we have work to do.

Intriguingly, six months after international consensus was reached on what has become known as the 30x30 target, the terms of the High Seas Treaty (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, or BBNJ Treaty) were agreed at the United Nations in New York. We now require 60 countries to ratify the treaty for it to come into force. We are currently nowhere near the required number, but there are high expectations that we’ll reach it by the time of the third UN Ocean Conference, June 9th–13th 2025, in Nice, France.

The High Seas Treaty sets up a procedure for the establishment of large-scale MPAs in those parts of the ocean beyond national jurisdictions. It should be noted that the ocean area beyond national jurisdictions is about 50% of the planet’s surface. The process by which this procedure can be activated in time for the High Seas Treaty to take its due place in the achievement of 30x30 will be one of the gripping environmental challenges of the next six years. Equally gripping will be identification of areas of rich or unique marine biodiversity that should be included in the 30%, while at the same time factoring in flexibility to compensate for ocean warming causing many marine ecosystems to move away from traditional locations.

With the disproportionate coverage of their marine exclusive economic zones vis-à-vis their national populations and revenues, it is increasingly recognised that it is a gross unfairness to expect small island developing states (SIDS) to carry the MPA burden on their own. If they dedicate 30% or more of their waters to MPAs, in many cases we are talking about vast swathes of the ocean, and SIDS are ill-equipped to forgo loss of fishing revenues, let alone meet the cost of effectively governing and policing these MPAs.

Solutions of sharing the burden, and even of creating revenue for these developing countries, lie in such initiatives as Niue’s NOW Trust, established to support that island country’s ambitious marine conservation goal, or the Seychelles national debt swap for financing conservation and its sustainable blue economy aspirations. These and other innovative financing tools are emerging in the fast-growing blue finance sector, showing us the course ahead for a viable and responsible oceanic delivery of 30x30. The essential principle to grasp is that we’re all in this together, and that MPAs need our attention and our financial resources if we are going to maintain a healthy ocean and a healthy planet.