Report and assessment of the status of the OSPAR network of Marine Protected Areas in 2023
Executive Summary
The North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy (NEAES)1 2030 is the means by which OSPAR’s 16 Contracting Parties will implement the OSPAR Convention until 2030. It sets out collective objectives to tackle the triple challenge facing the ocean: biodiversity loss, pollution, including marine litter, and climate change. Its implementation is part of OSPAR’s contribution to the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals. The Strategy sets out the goal of OSPAR Contracting Parties to further develop the OSPAR Network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the North-East Atlantic and to ensure that:
by 2030 the network of marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective conservation measures (OECMs)2 cover at least 30%3 of the OSPAR maritime area and to ensure it is representative, ecologically coherent and effectively managed to achieve its conservation objectives.
This report aims to summarise the information made available by OSPAR Contracting Parties on their respective MPAs nominated to the OSPAR Commission and on this basis assess the progress towards overall status, management and ecological coherence of the OSPAR MPA network.
Since Contracting Parties started nominating MPAs to the OSPAR Network of MPAs in 2005, all 12 Contracting Parties bordering the North-East Atlantic have nominated sites to the OSPAR Network of MPAs in their national waters. All Contracting Parties to OSPAR have collectively designated MPAs in Areas Beyond National jurisdiction (ABNJ) of the OSPAR maritime area.
Full Report
Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Network, available via https://odims.ospar.org/en/submissions/ospar_mpa_2023_01/. These data are presented as a live feed from the MPA Web Feature Service http://mpa.ospar.org/.
By 1 October 2023, the OSPAR Network of MPAs comprised 597 MPAs, including 8 MPAs collectively designated in ABNJ. All MPAs have a total surface area of 1 473 100 km2, covering 10.9% of the OSPAR Maritime Area. Therefore, by designating more than 10% of marine and coastal waters as MPAs, OSPAR has achieved Aichi Biodiversity target 11 of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Since the last Status Report in 2021, 14 MPAs with a surface area of more than 5 000 km2 were added to the OSPAR network of MPAs. The new MPAs were nominated by Ireland (2), Norway (2), Sweden (3) and the United Kingdom (7). The overall area covered by OSPAR MPAs of the OSPAR Maritime Area increased from 10.8% in 2021 to 10.9% in 2023.
To date, the majority of designated OSPAR MPAs are located in territorial waters, with an overall coverage of 21.2%. The area beyond the limits of national Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), i.e. the High Seas and the Area and the Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) areas, include 19.5% covered by OSPAR MPAs. The lowest coverage of OSPAR MPAs is found in the EEZ area where 2.9% are covered by OSPAR MPAs.
OSPAR Region III, the Celtic Seas, has an MPA coverage of 21.0%. The Greater North Sea (Region II) and the Wider Atlantic (Region V) have 19.8% and 17.3% area covered by OSPAR MPAs, respectively. The MPA coverage of the Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast (Region IV) is at 6.0% and the Arctic Waters (Region I) show the lowest coverage with 2.0%.
The application of the Madrid Criteria to the OSPAR MPA network illustrates that whilst significant progress has been made in developing the network, it cannot yet be considered to be ecologically coherent. Since the last Status Report on the OSPAR Network of MPAs in 2021, further work was done on developing an ecologically based assessment (see 2.6) to further explore the principle of MPA network connectivity, representation and replication for OSPAR threatened and/or declining species and habitats. However, additional work is still required to develop the way in which the OSPAR MPA network is assessed for ecological coherence.
The assessment against Madrid Criterion A (a proximity analysis of MPAs as a surrogate for the OSPAR MPA network principle of connectivity) suggests that the OSPAR MPA network is nearing being considered to be well distributed in OSPAR Regions II (North Sea) and III (Celtic Seas), but there remain significant gaps in OSPAR Regions I (Arctic). In OSPAR Region V (Wider Atlantic) gaps still persist in the southwest, south, north and east and a small gap further offshore in OSPAR Region IV (Bay of Biscay and The Iberian Coast). Future work should focus on addressing these geographical gaps where possible.
The assessment against Madrid Criterion B (percentage coverage of MPAs across the Dinter biogeographic provinces) suggests that the 10%-target has been exceeded for seven of the 19 provinces; six within the Eastern Atlantic Temperate sub-region, one within the Atlantic deep-sea region. A further one exceeds 9% total surface coverage (within the Eastern Atlantic Temperate sub-region) and another one exceeds 5% (within the Barents Sea province). Four provinces have no OSPAR MPAs and a further three have less than 1% surface coverage. These provinces are predominantly to the north of the OSPAR Maritime Area. By comparison to the last assessment undertaken in 2021 minor to moderate increases in percentage coverage of Dinter biogeographic provinces were observed.
The assessment against Madrid Criterion C (protection of OSPAR Threatened and/or Declining species and habitats within OSPAR MPAs) shows that 28 of the 58 (14 of 54 in 2018) OSPAR Threatened and/or Declining habitats and species (where recommendations are in place) are protected within more than one MPA in the OSPAR Region(s) they are considered to be under threat/subject to decline. All OSPAR Threatened and/or Declining invertebrates, eight of the nine birds, one of the two reptiles, two of the four marine mammals, four of the 21 fish and nine of the 18 habitats are considered sufficiently protected according to the requirements of Madrid criterion C.
With respect to the management status, OSPAR has made progress. 9 out of 10 (90 %) of the OSPAR MPAs have either full or partial management information in place, which is publicly documented, a 2% increase since the 2021 Status Report. In addition, 17% of the OSPAR MPAs are considered to have all the management measures in place considered necessary to achieve the conservation objectives of their protected features. This has increased since the 2021 reporting by 5%. Responses to monitoring programmes have also increased from previous data calls, with yes responses increasing from 14% in 2021 to 20% in 2023. With regard to achieving conservation objectives 16% of OSPAR MPAs are considered to have met their conservation objectives in 2023 compared to 18% in 2021 and nearly a third of OSPAR MPAs (29%) are considered to be partially achieving their conservation objectives in 2023.
In 2023, Contracting Parties were asked to provide an estimation of their confidence in their response. 4% of OSPAR MPAs were considered to have high confidence scores in their responses to this question, 27% to have moderate and 28% to have low confidence scores. However, in 2023 a high proportion of ‘unknown’ responses (27% compared to 30% in 2018) as to whether the protected features of OSPAR MPAs are moving towards their conservation objectives still remains, largely due to the lack of site-specific feature assessments and the lack of long-term ecological status information.
Future OSPAR work should focus on implementing the management measures considered necessary to achieve the conservation objectives of the protected features of the MPAs. In parallel, there is a need for long-term monitoring programs to be established to evaluate the effectiveness of such management measures to conclude with greater confidence on whether the conservation objectives of the protected features of OSPAR MPAs are being achieved. Work should also progress on improving methods of evaluating the degree to which the OSPAR MPA network is well-managed to support a more sophisticated assessment as to whether the OSPAR MPA network is delivering a genuine conservation benefit to targeted habitats, species and ecological processes. In addition, Contracting Parties have identified barriers to effective management and should review the proposed solutions provided and consider implementing all solutions that are applicable.
For OSPAR MPAs in ABNJ, there should be continued effort to further the collective arrangement and cooperate through e.g. Memorandums of Understanding with relevant competent management authorities, so that they can consider appropriate management actions to help deliver the conservation objectives for OSPAR MPAs in ABNJ. Contracting Parties should continue to raise awareness of OSPAR MPAs in ABNJ with relevant stakeholders and interest groups and look to further our scientific understanding of these sites.
1https://www.ospar.org/documents?v=46337
2The percentage targets are regional targets and relate to the OSPAR Maritime area.
3The definition of OECMs will follow the definition agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity.