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The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has just finished a report on the "Contribution of Marine Conservation Agreements to Biodiversity Protection, Fisheries Management and Sustainable Financing in Fiji."The report documents the degree and scale to which Marine Conservation Agreements (MCAs) are being used in coastal waters in Fiji. The study focuses on partnerships involving local communities and the tourism sector.

Palau’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with a total of 500,238 km2 (over 300,000 mi2 ), became a multi-zoned national MPA in 2015, through the Palau National Marine Sanctuary Act. The larger zone, taking up 80% of the EEZ, is called the Sanctuary and is one of only 25 Large Scale Marine Protected Areas in the world. The Sanctuary is a strict marine reserve which prohibits disturbance, alteration, destruction, or extraction of any resource.

Biodiversity loss is a social and ecological emergency, and calls have been made for the global expansion of protected areas (PAs) to tackle this crisis. It is unclear, however, where best to locate new PAs to protect biodiversity cost-effectively. To answer this question, we conducted a spatial meta-analysis by overlaying seven global biodiversity templates to identify conservation priority zones. These are then combined with low human impact areas to identify cost-effective zones (CEZs) for PA designation.

The global network of terrestrial protected areas (PAs) has experienced a fourfold expansion since the 1970s. Yet, there is increasing debate around the role of the global PA estate in covering and sustaining threatened species, with serious ramifications for current PA financing and the setting of post-2020 global conservation targets.

Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) contains the aim to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure the degree to which this was achieved, we used expert elicitation to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993–2020 (the lifetime of the CBD) and 2010–2020 (the timing of Aichi Target 12). We found that conservation action prevented 21–32 bird and 7–16 mammal extinctions since 1993, and 9–18 bird and two to seven mammal extinctions since 2010.

The Marine Protected Area (MPA) Guide refines existing language and captures a shared vision to describe MPAs and the conservation outcomes they provide. The Guide is the work of many hundreds of stakeholders from around the world. It is a timely and important tool to help drive more and better ocean protection and reflects a collective ambition to find unity in language and consistency in approach.

Full Document (Pdf)

The purpose of this Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (BSAP) is to Assist the Marshall Islands to Plan for the Conservation of its biodiversity and for in the sustainable use of its biological resources. This is the first time that such a strategy and action plan has been formulated for the country. It provides an opportunity for the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to integrate principles of sustainable resource management and biodiversity conservation into the national development planning processes.

Global biodiversity loss is rapid and ongoing. International efforts are redoubling as the international community realizes the importance of biodiversity in maintaining our life support systems. In 2004 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity committed to have effectively conserved at least 10% of marine and coastal ecological regions globally by 2010. Micronesian leaders responded to this commitment, and have taken this one step further by committing to effectively conserve 30% of nearshore marine and 20% of terrestrial resources by the year 2020.

A Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is under discussion for the period 2021–2030, which will replace the ‘‘Aichi Targets’’ adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010. Given the limited success in meeting most of the Aichi Targets, this new framework must adopt a different approach. A key challenge the GBF must address is its implementation at national scales. Four ways this implementation challenge can be addressed include:

Ocean health is critical to all life on this planet. Phytoplankton, the microscopic plants found in the sunlit area of almost all oceans, generate about half of the Earth’s oxygen, and the complex interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere sustains our climate. Yet the oceans are in decline, largely because of human activities that are driving the collapse of fisheries, the loss of biodiversity, and the acidification of seawater.