New Study Finds World's Coastal Waters Are Vastly Under Protected
“Unfortunately, we found that great swathes of the world’s coastal waters are unprotected, meaning coastal livelihoods, incomes and food supplies are all at risk as fish stocks fall and coastlines erode,” said Mark Spalding, senior marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy and lead author of the study. “The good news is that marine protected areas can be a powerful tool to ensure that ocean habitats remain healthy and productive for future generations – but we need to expand and strengthen protection efforts now.”
Coastal waters including bays and estuaries and rich habitats such as mangroves, salt marshes and coral reefs, are essential for communities and economies around globe, but these ecosystems are also among the most threatened on the planet. Rising sea levels, increasingly intense storms linked to climate change, rapidly expanding coastal populations and habitat loss are all current challenges to conserving and protecting coastal resources.
The study examined the protection status for each of the world’s varied coastal ecoregions (geographically and scientifically similar areas), but also expanded its vision out to the open oceans. Here levels of protection are even less and the researchers found that only 0.7 percent of all ocean areas fall within protected areas.
