1,- 1Marine Conservation Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA (beth.pike@marine-conservation.org)
- 2The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy, United Kingdom of Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales (jbriggs@pewtrusts.org)
- 3Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA (jenna.sullivan-stack@oregonstate.edu)
- 4National Center for Scientific Research, PSL Université Paris, CRIOBE, CNRS-EPHE-UPVD, Paris, France (joachim.claudet@gmail.com)
- 5CCMAR – Centre of Marine Sciences, University of Algarve, Campus Gambelas, Faro, Portugal (barbarahcosta@gmail.com)
- 6Oceano Azul Foundation, Oceanário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal (egoncalves@oceanoazulfoundation.org)
- 7Center for American Progress, Washington DC, USA (avillagomez@americanprogress.org)
UN Ocean Summit
One Ocean Science Congress 2025
Ocean protection quality is lagging quantity: Applying a scientific framework to assess real progress against the 30 by 30 target – and proposing a blueprint for effective headway
Theme 3, Session T3-1
Climate-smart, area-based management approaches, including marine protected areas
Elizabeth P. Pike, Jessica M. C. MacCarthy, Sarah O. Hameed, Nikki Harasta, Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, Jenna Sullivan-Stack, Joachim Claudet, Barbara Horta e Costa, Emanuel J. Gonçalves, Angelo Villagomez, Lance Morgan, Johnny Briggs
The international community set a global conservation target to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030 (“30 x 30”) to reverse biodiversity loss, through marine protected areas (MPAs) and Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECMs). Approximately 99% of global marine protections submitted to the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) are currently within MPAs. However, varied design and implementation results in significantly different conservation outcomes, making MPA coverage alone an inadequate metric. We used The MPA Guide framework combined with local knowledge to assess the world’s largest 100 MPAs by area, representing nearly 90% of reported global MPA coverage and 7.3% of the global ocean area, and analyzed the distribution of MPA quality across political and ecological regions. This represented the most detail assessment of the quality of progress against the 30x30 goal, to date. We found that a quarter of the assessed MPA coverage is not implemented, and one-third is incompatible with the conservation of nature. Two factors contribute to this outcome: (1) many reported MPAs lack regulations or management, and (2) some MPAs allow high impact activities. Fully and highly protected MPAs account for one-third of the assessed area but are unevenly distributed across ecoregions in part because some nations have designated large, highly protected MPAs in their overseas or remote territories.
During the UNOC Science Congress, we propose to present an update of the Top 100 Analysis, integrating a more recent update of progress towards 30x30 and in consideration of new commitments made during the COP16 UN Biodiversity Conference held in Colombia. We will offer a framework for making effective progress towards 30x30, which will include consideration of protections designated in areas beyond national jurisdiction (via the UN High Seas Treaty) and enhanced recognition of OECMs within various governance structures (from Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) to Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs)). In all instances we will detail the core enabling conditions required to effectively safeguard representative marine ecosystems from destructive human activities.
How to cite: Pike, B., Briggs, J., MacCarthy, J., Hameed, S., Harasta, N., Morgan, L., Grorud-Colvert, K., Sullivan-Stack, J., Claudet, J., Horta e Costa, B., Gonçalves, E., and Villagomez, A.: Ocean protection quality is lagging quantity: Applying a scientific framework to assess real progress against the 30 by 30 target – and proposing a blueprint for effective headway, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-123, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-123, 2025.
