Report | May 12, 2020

Protecting Marine Nature by 2030

We are currently experiencing the 6th largest species extinction. The IPBES assessment1 found that two-thirds of marine environments have been “severely altered” by human activity, with overfishing named as the biggest cause of marine biodiversity loss in the last 40 years. It is absolutely clear that the EU must increase its ambition on ocean protection, which will in turn bring significant benefits to local communities, as well as in terms of climate adaptation. This is an important driver to contribute to achieving the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 14 on the ocean in an EU context.

Significant efforts were deployed in recent years by key EU Member States to escalate ocean conservation on the political agenda. We have enough knowledge to protect the most fragile and biodiverse parts of our ocean: countries now need to implement what has been committed. Since 2003, scientists have been calling for 20-30% of each marine habitat to be strictly protected. In Europe alone, the journey to reach 10% of the sea designated as marine protected areas (MPAs) was a long path full of pitfalls, never mind efforts to achieve less than 1% of strictly protected areas. The prevalence of marine ‘paper parks’ in Europe illustrates the lack of political will to deliver: 85% of the current network of MPAs does not have any management in place and thus delivers no benefits to the marine life that sites are intended to protect.