World needs to protect 32 million square kilometers of ocean in two years
Jeremy Hancemongabay.com
October 20, 2010
"Overall the shortfall in our achievements is quite shocking," says Mark Spalding with The Nature Conservancy and an editor of the report. "We attained only one tenth of our target. Even that statistic is buoyed up by a handful of giant marine parks, leaving a greater shortfall in many areas where the pressures are most intense. We need to realize that marine protection isn’t just about nature, it’s about ourselves. If we can’t manage and sustain our seas in their entirety, humans will be high on the list of losers."
 Coral reef off Cancun. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. |
Researchers with the Nature Conservancy suggest that governments around the world work on 'marine spatial planning', i.e. zoning the oceans in a way a city creates zones.
"There are areas for the houses where we live, areas for the businesses and industries where we work and shop, and areas set aside as parks and open space where we play and watch wildlife,” says Imèn Meliane a lead author with the report. “If we apply these same principles throughout our oceans, we’ll have a long-term approach that combines ocean protection with sustainable use.”
While land ecosystems have been seeing varying degrees of protection for over a century, the concept of marine protected areas is relatively new and has only become centralized in the late Twentieth Century.
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