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Conservationists had reason to cheer as 2020 dawned.<\/p>\n
On January 1, the Pacific island nation of Palau officially closed 80 percent of its territorial waters to fishing, creating one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Three months later, of course, the world changed.<\/span><\/p>\n Almost overnight, the COVID pandemic pummeled economies the world over, and Palau was no exception. Short of revenues, the government had a choice: Reopen its waters to lucrative commercial fishing, as other countries had done<\/a>, or strike some sort of balance between the twin necessities of marine protection and marine production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In a bold move, it chose the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n Palau\u2019s \u201cBlue Prosperity Plan,\u201d as it was called, launched a process to assess and manage how and where some fishing could be restored, while committing to finding new and sustainable ways of financing conservation.<\/span><\/p>\n Even as the pandemic slowly recedes, countries face the same issue as Palau: How to balance protecting ever-more fragile seas while ensuring that the ocean can continue to provide food and livelihoods for billions of people.<\/span><\/p>\n As a new article shows, finding a balance has been the exception more than the rule.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One thing is certain: Protected areas are popular right now.<\/span><\/p>\n The global \u201c30 by 30<\/a>\u201d effort \u2014 protect 30 percent of the planet\u2019s lands and waters by 2030 \u2014 has spawned a number of new marine protected areas (MPAs), especially \u201cblue-water\u201d MPAs in large-scale, open ocean areas far from coasts: Nearly 40 such zones have been established in the past two decades, covering 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet the harsh realities of food security and economics are inescapable, and though the vast majority of these MPAs have \u201cmixed use\u201d zoning that assures varying levels of protections and production, difficult trade-offs loom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The tension between protection and sustainable production is not new, but in the marine realm, it is particularly fraught: The marine conservation world has largely split into two camps, experts say, with little integration \u2014 and even some animosity \u2014 between the two.<\/span><\/p>\n That has to change, according to a new paper<\/a> in the journal npj Ocean Sustainability, which highlights critical scientific gaps between the two sides that, if unaddressed, could jeopardize the ocean\u2019s ability to support humanity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The ocean is an economic powerhouse: Commercial tuna fisheries alone contribute more than US$ 40 billion<\/a> to the global economy every year and provide a disproportionately large percentage of annual revenue for many Pacific island nations.<\/span><\/p>\n Protecting the ocean, meanwhile, is not cheap: Marine protected areas can cost on the order of millions of dollars to establish, with annual costs for management and staffing that run into the millions more. Meanwhile, the benefits of MPAs take longer to materialize and may not immediately translate into revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n Expecting countries \u2014 particularly small developing states \u2014 to forgo revenues by closing off fishing \u201cis a hard ask,\u201d acknowledged Jack Kittinger, an expert on marine economies at Conservation International and the paper\u2019s lead author.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMarine protected areas have a cost to set up,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey have a cost to manage. Then when a country hits a crisis of some kind, it becomes tempting to open those waters to fishing again.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, as Kittinger and his co-authors write, the economics and conservation finance options for blue-water MPAs are underdeveloped and poorly understood compared with other sectors of the ocean-based economy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople have been working on integrating sustainable fisheries and coastal MPAs for a long time, and there are a lot more options for financing protection in coastal seas. In the \u2018blue-water\u2019 realm, there are fewer options at the moment,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Take tourism: Many coastal protected areas draw revenue from visitors. The Galapagos Islands, for example, charge a steep entry fee (which will double this year<\/a>). Tourists, on the other hand, aren\u2019t lining up to visit open ocean in the middle of the South Pacific.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How to pay for conservation, then? The article urges further research into the development of bonds and other financial instruments \u2014 including but not limited to philanthropy \u2014 to keep marine protections afloat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some countries are already getting creative here, including the Pacific island of Niue, which recently launched a financing mechanism it calls the world\u2019s first \u201cocean conservation commitment<\/a>\u201d \u2014 just one example of how developing countries are innovating to protect their seas.<\/span><\/p>\n Another gap that the researchers highlight is as big as the sea itself: the differences between marine life along coastlines and life in the open ocean.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor decades, the scientific community has been working on coastal environments. We\u2019re behind the curve for the pelagic [open] ocean, which covers most of the planet but is far less understood,\u201d Kittinger said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Pelagic species are highly migratory, he noted, with far more variability and dynamism needed to survive in the harsher and deeper environments they live in. Meanwhile, the migration patterns of many pelagic species \u2014 especially tuna<\/a> \u2014 are shifting due to climate change, creating more uncertainty over where to restrict fishing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As the researchers write, \u201cthe number, distribution and size of self-replenishing populations of major targeted migratory fish stocks, including the locations of key spawning and nursery sites, are largely unknown.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo if we establish a [pelagic] protected area,\u201d Kittinger said, \u201cbut everyone’s on the other side of it catching the tuna and sharks and turtles, then we still have a conservation problem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lastly, the researchers point to a gap in equity.<\/span><\/p>\n Collectively, countries in the Global South have designated close to half of all MPAs worldwide, playing an outsized role in protecting the ocean. The benefits of such protection are often shared globally, with these nations effectively subsidizing ocean health for the rest of the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe disproportionate burden of these protected areas is falling on the Global South, with inadequate investment from the Global North \u2014 creating huge equity issues,\u201d Kittinger said. \u201cAnd the research agenda on that has been pretty thin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The global demand for fish, the researchers write, has left developing countries managing pressure from larger and more powerful interests. Unsurprisingly, this has created power mismatches where coastal and island communities don\u2019t always receive a fair share of the benefits of either marine protections or sustainable production \u2014 an area where the researchers call for further research and intervention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the biggest hurdles in making blue-water marine protections work might be marine experts themselves, Kittinger says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I\u2019ve learned is that there are just some folks, and maybe even a lot of folks in our sector, on both sides of this debate, that are ideologically dug in,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s really hard for anyone to be in the middle \u2014 there\u2019s no reward for that, scientifically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo we’re going there \u2013 with this publication, and with subsequent research. We’re hoping to make a little bit of a splash with it,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Kittinger says he\u2019s hopeful that this paper can help chart a different course for ocean conservation, and the scientists that support it. The future of marine life \u2014 and of our continued dependence on it \u2014 may hinge on what comes next.<\/span><\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n Bruno Vander Velde is the managing director of content at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates.<\/a> Also, please consider supporting our critical work.<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n