With less than 1 percent of North American oceans under protection, the continent is falling far behind international targets to conserve ocean ecosystems, says a report out by NGOs in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
At the Biodiversity Convention in 2012, officials from around the world agreed to put 10 percent of ocean space under the same kind of protections as national parks by 2020. While the U.S. didn’t sign the agreement, President Obama confirmed his support for the goal, along with Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, earlier this year.
The agreement calls on countries to develop Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), where oil drilling, ocean dumping and seabed mining are prohibited to varying degrees, according to The Guardian. Depending on the level of protection, some types of fishing and resource extraction may be permitted.
The Monterey Bay national marine sanctuary off the coast of California is the largest North American MPA to date, covering an area greater than Yellowstone National Park. Since protections were first put in place 15 years ago, the area has seen a dramatic increase in marine diversity and fish populations, which has proven a boon to fishermen as well as conservationists, says FERN writer Paul Greenberg in “The Fishermen’s Dilemma.”
But if countries fail to develop more MPAs, the world’s oceans will not only see depleted fish populations, but also suffer more from climate change and ocean acidification, said Michael Gravitz, director of policy and legislation at the Marine Conservation Institute. “If you said to yourself, well, we’re going to go into a national forest and we’re going to sweep the forest once every two, three weeks and shoot everything we can find, you wouldn’t expect to see many animals or much wildlife or a normal forest left after very long. But in essence, that’s what we expect to do to the oceans.” That said, Gravitz told The Guardian that MPAs are a proven way to revitalize marine systems. “Oceans really can heal themselves if you leave them alone.”
The report was authored by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and the Marine Conservation Institute, along with researchers from Mexico.