WDC welcomes increase of Marine Protected Areas
It’s good news announced at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meetings in Hyderabad, India (8-19 Oct. 2012) that marine protected areas (MPAs) have shown a 10-fold rise the past decade to cover 2.3% of the surface of the global ocean.
OK, it’s only a drop in the world ocean puddle, and the growth is being driven by just a handful of fairly new, large MPAs, most of them designated with the PEW Foundation’s help.
The policy brief by Mark D. Spalding, from the Nature Conservancy, and others notes that the 20 largest MPAs cover more than 5 million km2 and that this represents more than 60% of the entire global MPA coverage.
But from a whale, dolphin, and large mobile marine animal point of view, these large areas include potentially significant habitats.
Of course, it will be another matter figuring out how to manage these areas, most of which are far from communities, and to make the protection effective. Read more on this.
One such area we at WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, have been focusing on is the Costa Rica Dome. This area has a substantial population of endangered blue whales that breed, raise their calves and feed in the area. There are also huge dolphin, shark, sea turtle and other important species in this productive area. We have been working since 2009 to try to get this area accepted through the CBD as an ecologically or biologically significant area (an “EBSA”) preparatory to it becoming a large high seas MPA.
In August at a CBD workshop, we succeeded in getting the Costa Rica Dome endorsed by scientists — working with our partners MarViva, Marine Conservation Institute, the International Committee on Marine Mammal Protected Areas and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas. It is now being considered by the CBD Parties in India. The newly proposed boundaries are not quite as large as we’d hoped, but the marine area now extends right to the shoreline of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which will help buy-in from local communities and government and connect ecosystems from the land with coastal whale, dolphin and sea turtle populations to the deep sea. On that note, for obtaining “buy-in”, the proposed name “Costa Rica Dome” has been changed to “Central American Dome”. This is a bit like changing the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of Mexico and Southern US States”, though the Costa Rica Dome’s established name is not so well known. But if changing an accepted geographical name results in collective responsibility and better protection, I am all for it.
For more information about the implications and next steps for marine protected areas, visit cetaceanhabitats.org
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Hi I/we (NTA) have been harking on for six mhnots or so that delaying tactics were been used by Scottish Departments directly in relation to SPA and MPA areas now we know why! it will be interesting to see which areas were dropped and which will be anounced in Dec Marine Scotland told NTA that the Scottish Government intended to stream line the planning process it seems that streamlining means simply, removing protection from our wilder places, ignoring national parks and most worrying of all now: putting economics and political policies infront of environmental concerns so much for this governments pseudo green credentials.The NTA campaign has always been driven by objective facts presented to us we have never been an anti-wind lobby, though on occasions we have been drawn into the larger strategic implications of the business at large we have always remained stead-fast on highlighting local concerns and effects. One has to wonder now about the elephant in the corner the issue of, or in the Tiree Array case, due to it's size, localized climate change caused by the array. This could very well affect our entire Island, it's agriculture, it's wild life, it's SSSI's, it's people to say this will happen would be subjective. However, given that we have been proved right about the above changes I am inclined to say this will happen and the developer and Scottish Government are aware of this. Both parties may very well say they will carry out investegations and studies to see the effects I would sincerely and rationally expect these studies to take place pre-deployment/pre-construction. But, as we are seeing now we live in a commercial/political world and I fear that if folk don't wake up and smell the coffee we will be fobbed off with a post-deployment study, we will infact have become the sacrificial lamb that opened the door to industrialisation of least damaged/most natural locations not only throughout our beautiful west coast .but throughout Scotland. You have been warned !