Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas: Guidelines for design and management (2017)
Large-scale marine protected areas: an indispensable tool for healthy oceans The Earth’s oceans continue to face significant, pervasive threats such as overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution. In addition, climate change, inclusive of sea temperature rise and ocean acidification, is altering the Earth’s marine ecosystems in ways we may not fully understand for decades. Profound ecological changes are occurring and will continue to have a negative impact on the oceans, their resources and the people and communities whose very survival depends on the sea. In the face of these challenges, there is an urgent to need not only to ‘go big’ with our marine conservation efforts, but to do so in ways that increase and strengthen models of best practice management across MPAs at all scales. LSMPAs are important components of local, regional and international strategies aimed at comprehensively improving the efforts and outcomes of protected area networks and marine conservation globally (see Box 1 and 2).
Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas: Guidelines for design and management (2017).pdf