MPA News

When nations gathered in Paris last December to forge a pact on climate change, the agreement’s original text made no mention at all of oceans. Not only did this oversight ignore 71% of Earth’s surface; it also overlooked the fact that marine ecosystems act as an enormous climate control system. The seas regulate the concentration of atmospheric CO2 worldwide by absorbing and storing it in a variety of ways. A healthy, resilient ocean – where there is abundant plant life to convert CO2 to oxygen, and abundant animal populations to store carbon in their shells, bodies, and wastes – may…

In Seychelles, a unique project is underway. It links a restructuring of some of the island nation’s international debt with a financial mechanism to support adaptation to climate change, namely through improved marine and coastal ecosystem management. That management will include a marine spatial plan for the Seychelles’ 1.37-million-km2 EEZ in which up to 30% of the area will be designated for high and medium levels of biodiversity protection. Presented by Seychelles officials at the Paris climate summit in December 2015, the project is fairly complex. The debt restructuring, facilitated by The Nature Conservancy with the involvement of the Paris…

The UK Government has announced its intent to designate a large no-take MPA around part of Ascension Island, a remote and lightly populated UK territory in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, just south of the Equator. Although formal declaration of the MPA’s boundaries may not happen until 2017 or later, the UK Government and Ascension Island Government are taking a first step this year, closing an area covering 234,291 km2 (or 52.6%) of the island’s waters. This closure is intended to allow research to scope the eventual boundaries of the MPA. The UK Government promised last year to create a “blue belt”…

South Africa's oldest MPA is in limbo now as it awaits a government decision on whether to reopen it to fishing, as requested by local anglers.

In March 2016, a 16-km-long swath of the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, will become the eighth World Surfing Reserve, joining other iconic surf spots in Australia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and the US. The designation of a world surfing reserve – and similar national surfing reserves in Australia – is part ecolabel, part community organization. The designation aims to highlight and protect outstanding waves, surf zones, and their surrounding environments, including the economic and cultural attributes of those areas. A strong commitment to local involvement in a surf area’s management, through a council, is required for designation. The concept…

Correction: Bill Ballantine In our October-November 2015 issue, MPA News misidentified the nationality of marine scientist and MPA advocate Bill Ballantine, who died on 1 November. Although Ballantine spent most of his adulthood and career in New Zealand and was considered by many as the “father of marine conservation” in his adopted country, he was born in Leicester, England. New report outlines how global conservation finance could be grown to $300-$400 billion per year When a report describes how annual conservation financing worldwide could be grown from its current level of US $52 billion to as much as $400 billion…