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โ€˜Marine conservation talks must include human rightsโ€™: Q&A with biologist Vivienne Solรญs Rivera

March 29, 2022 โ€” Human rights, such as those of small-scale fishers, must be included in the global conservation goal to protect 30% of the worldโ€™s lands and oceans by 2030, say environmentalists, otherwise this proposed conservation target will fail and the livelihood of Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) around the world will be jeopardized.

This is the urgent message in a new open letter directed at policymakers gathered in Geneva this month to finalize the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which will be presented at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) conference, COP15, in China this April.

The open letter โ€“ created by the IPLC marine conservation organization Blue Ventures and signed by fishers, farmers, conservationists, environmentalists, human rights advocates and scientists around the world โ€“ refers explicitly to Target 3 of the framework, also known as 30ร—30. This target has been lauded internationally as an ambitious goal to protect 30% of the worldโ€™s lands and oceans by 2030, as the world faces a biodiversity crisis and mass species extinction.

But authors of the open letter point out that simply creating more reserve areas without IPLC inclusion is a flawed strategy. Too often, protected areas lead to displacements of IPLCs in the name of nature conservation.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Will Large Protected Areas Save the Oceans or Politicize Them?

March 25, 2019 โ€” How can we save the oceans? They cover two-thirds of the planet, but none are safe from fishing fleets, minerals prospectors, or the insidious influences of global warming and ocean acidification.

In the past decade, there has been a push to create giant new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). They now cover nearly 9.7 million square miles, equivalent to more than the land area of North America. Cristiana Paศ™ca Palmer, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says the world is on course reach the conventionโ€™s target of having a tenth of the oceans protected by next year.

But questions are being raised. The growth has been driven by the formation of giant MPAs bigger than many countries, often in remote regions where the threat to biodiversity is lower. So, critics are asking, are countries creating big distant MPAs to distract attention from the harder task of protecting trashed coastal ecosystems closer to home? And is there a geopolitical game afoot, a stealth rush to control the oceans for political ends? And does that explain why half of the ocean waters covered by MPAs are in the hands of the United States and two former European colonial powers, Britain and France?

Most ocean scientists see the rush to create vast MPAs as a boon to marine conservation. They are cost-effective, connect different marine ecosystems, and encompass larger parts of the ranges of migrating species such as whales and tuna, protecting โ€œcorridors of connectivity among habitats in ways not afforded by smaller MPAs,โ€ says Bethan Oโ€™Leary, a marine scientist at the University of York in England.

Read the full story at Yale Environment 360

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