The race for vast remote ‘marine protected areas’ may be a diversion  Peter Jones

The seas around Hawaii are set to become the world’s largest marine protected area, US president Barack Obama has announced. The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument will be expanded to more than 1.5 million square kilometres – that’s as big as France, Spain and Germany combined. Such vast remote MPAs are making a very large contribution to achieving a target agreed amongst parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to designate 10% of the area of global seas as MPA by 2020 (Aichi target 11). Even before this most recent designation, ~62% of global MPA coverage was down to just 24 such designations (all >100,000 km2) amongst a total of over 6,000 MPAs, which all together cover only 3.27% of the global marine area, so without vast remote MPAs, the 10% target would be even further from being reached. Click here to read more

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