Marine Protected Areas and 30x30 enter their Hard Part Era™
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| Now comes the hard part |
In his 2022 book Why Sharks Matter, David Shiffman points out that some people refer to very large marine protected areas as “low hanging fruit” or easy wins, because they lack fishing industry opposition and are easy to designate. His book quotes me giving the contrary position, “If making MPAs like this is supposed to be so easy, then why it it so hard?”
A surprisingly large number of opinion pieces this year are pointing out that ocean conservation is about to enter its Hard Part Era™. I first noticed this trend last week when my friend and colleague at The Pew Charitable Trusts, Dr. Johnny Briggs published, The Hard Part of 30x30 Starts Now. The very next day my other friend and colleague at Pew, Matt Rand published Designating 10% of the Ocean Was the First Step. Now Comes the Hard Part. Both essays make the case that the era of measuring ocean success by square kilometers protected is over; now the challenge is making those protections effective, equitable, and durable. Matt’s blog goes so far as to say, “A new line on a map is not protection.” He explains further by pointing out the threats posed by poorly designed MPAs and expands on how durable success will require investments in human capital and long term funding.
Later that week I stumbled upon Giacomo Abrusci’s blog for SEVENSEAS Media (which he founded and runs) where he marveled how Bloomberg Philantrophies recent $260 million marine protected area funding announcement does not mention “designate” nor “announce” a single time. Rather theirs is a commitment to “implement”, “manage”, “enforce”, “finance”, and “monitor.” While Giacomo does not specifically reference the emerging new Hard Part Era™, he breaks down 30x30 by saying it is “3 per cent working, 7 per cent on paper, 20 to go.”
I did a google search for “marine protected area” and “hard part” published in the last year and found:
- The MarineBio Conservation Society wrote 10 Percent of the Ocean Is Protected. The Hard Part Starts Now.
- Six billion dollars later, the hard part of saving the ocean begins now in Cultivate Communications by Samuel Stacy and Holly Holmes.
- Oceanographic published The UK has finally ratified the High Seas Treaty... now the hard part by Rob Hutchins.
- John Ian Lau wrote Our Ocean Conference Pledges $6.4 Billion — The Hard Part Is Proving It Lands for Ocean Vines.
- In Mongabay, Rhett Ayers Butler wrote about how turning the UN High Seas Agreement into practice is the hard part.
- Kerstin Kröger used the exact same phrase to describe the process in a blog on the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee website.
The common threads through all of these blogs are all things that we’ve collectively known for years, but that sometimes are brushed aside in the name of simplifying conservation messaging or making funding pitches: Making commitments is not the same thing as delivering on commitments. Early designations were supposedly easy (I’ve written and spoken extensively on this, maybe start with this talk on Beyond 30x30 at the International Marine Conservation Congress), and now future designations will undoubtedly be politically harder. There’s more to conservation than area coverage. Ocean conservation in this new Hard Part Era™ will require more attention to active implementation of existing protected areas, learning how to work in more politically complex communities, and ensuring that size is not our only metric of success.
Mostly unspoken, but hinted at in all of these writings is the obvious need for new metrics of conservation success. Most MPA effectiveness reviews (beyond size) focus on fish biomass and biodiversity; far fewer ask whether MPAs successfully change human behavior in lasting ways. Instead of asking how much of the ocean is protected, perhaps we should ask how are MPAs effective at changing human behavior (since we know that is the root harm of ecological loss) and how do we measure the scale and effectiveness of that change? In the Hard Part Era™ we recognize that socioeconomic metrics around local community well-being are strongly associated with biological outcomes.
Conservation messaging is an ever evolving thing; I grew up hearing about Save the Rainforest and Save the Whales. I still care about those things, but I haven’t seen those bumper stickers on cars in decades. 30x30 by design is a time limited conservation goal, and it will be replaced by something else (Hard Part Era™ will unlikely be adopted by the ocean conservation community). If you read some of David Brower’s (Sierra Club) work from the 1960s, he was talking about protecting 10% of lands even way back then. I think we will continue to talk about area targets as one measure of conservation, but I think they will eventually fade in importance as new thinking emerges.
For example, in my work at CAP, we are trying to influence the ocean conservation aspirations for the 2030s to be more about measuring how conservation interventions benefit people, and not just some people, but people living all across the United States. We have this idea of B.E.A.C.H. 35 – a national pledge to protect at least one beloved ocean habitat in all 35 coastal and Great Lakes states and territories by 2030, a pivotal shift away from area targets that instead prioritizes critical habitats, quality, equity, and local, community-led stewardship.
But at the end of the Hard Part Era™ day, it’s important to remember that it’s impossible to understand the health or success of a complicated system using only a single metric. Measuring and understanding ocean health needs as many data points as measuring the health of a person or the economy.
Mostly unspoken, but hinted at in all of these writings is the obvious need for new metrics of conservation success. Most MPA effectiveness reviews (beyond size) focus on fish biomass and biodiversity; far fewer ask whether MPAs successfully change human behavior in lasting ways. Instead of asking how much of the ocean is protected, perhaps we should ask how are MPAs effective at changing human behavior (since we know that is the root harm of ecological loss) and how do we measure the scale and effectiveness of that change? In the Hard Part Era™ we recognize that socioeconomic metrics around local community well-being are strongly associated with biological outcomes.
Conservation messaging is an ever evolving thing; I grew up hearing about Save the Rainforest and Save the Whales. I still care about those things, but I haven’t seen those bumper stickers on cars in decades. 30x30 by design is a time limited conservation goal, and it will be replaced by something else (Hard Part Era™ will unlikely be adopted by the ocean conservation community). If you read some of David Brower’s (Sierra Club) work from the 1960s, he was talking about protecting 10% of lands even way back then. I think we will continue to talk about area targets as one measure of conservation, but I think they will eventually fade in importance as new thinking emerges.
For example, in my work at CAP, we are trying to influence the ocean conservation aspirations for the 2030s to be more about measuring how conservation interventions benefit people, and not just some people, but people living all across the United States. We have this idea of B.E.A.C.H. 35 – a national pledge to protect at least one beloved ocean habitat in all 35 coastal and Great Lakes states and territories by 2030, a pivotal shift away from area targets that instead prioritizes critical habitats, quality, equity, and local, community-led stewardship.
But at the end of the Hard Part Era™ day, it’s important to remember that it’s impossible to understand the health or success of a complicated system using only a single metric. Measuring and understanding ocean health needs as many data points as measuring the health of a person or the economy.
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