Oceano Azul Foundation
It is time to get back to your true nature, you were born in water, not land. We come from the ocean, and we are part of it. The ocean’s point of view matters. #oceansays
Our Goal
This initiative aims at promoting a new regulation-based classification system for MPAs by developing an on-line tool to be used by the global MPAs community. This new classification system was developed by a consortium of European institutions and is based on the regulation of MPAs.
This was developed under a European ERA-NET project called Biodiversa, and involved scientific institutions from Portugal, France, Norway and Sweden. It aims at allowing to classify MPAs having into account the impact of the activities allowed inside them and in each zone of the MPA. It is expected that this system will be complementary to the current IUCN categorization system for protected areas and will help to solve some of the limitations of the current system. The long-term goal is to have this classification adopted by IUCN or other international institutions.
Initiative status
Initiative keywords
- Global MPA Community
- IUCN
- MPAs
- New Classification
- New Regulation
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Target
Global
Impact
- Promoting a new regulation-based classification system for MPAs;
- Developing an on-line tool to be used by the global MPA community;
- Have this classification adopted by IUCN and other international institutions.
Description
There was an effort in the last decade to increase the area of the ocean under protection, but many of the existing MPAs are not truly effective and are only "paper parks". It is thus key to find an answer to the following questions: What are we protecting? How do we measure the current and future levels of protection of MPAs? How well does partial protection works? This new classification system aims at helping to answer these questions and it is sensitive to the scale of impacts of human activities.
This project started in December 2016 and will be completed in March 2017.
6 months
From December 2016 to March 2017
Resources
A new global classification for marine protected areas
.pdf (1,37 MB)
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It is time to get back to your true nature, you were born in water, not land. We come from the ocean, and we are part of it. The ocean’s point of view matters. #oceansays
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