December 2012: The December 2012 edition of “the greenline,” the newsletter of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), notes the successes of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as an efficient tool to achieve the Aichi target 11 on the conservation of coastal and marine areas.

The Aichi targets were agreed by 193 parties in 2010 during the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Target 11 states that, by 2020, 10% of coastal and marine areas should be “conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes.” Currently, there are approximately 5880 MPAs, representing 1.17% of the world’s marine conservation.

The newsletter highlights a GEF side event organized during the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11), in Hyderabad, India, in October 2011. The event showed the value of MPAs as efficient tools to restore and conserve key biodiversity hotspots, capable of promoting long-term sustainable economic development. While GEF funding has allowed a significant increase in the amount of MPAs, participants underscored four remaining challenges including scaling up the representation of MPAs; strengthening stakeholder collaboration to combat unsustainable activities in MPAs; constructing MPAs in harmony with an ensemble of environmental policies in order to ensure a broader “package of actions” to cope with rising pressures of human activities, including shipping, fisheries, oil extraction, tourism and climate change; and securing innovative sources of funding required to guarantee long-term conditions for MPA management.

Despite these challenges, the GEF notes in its report, titled “Catalyzing Ocean Finance,” that modest public investment could generate substantial private-sector co-financing, leading to significant improvement in ocean environments. The report states that “an initial public investment – on the order of $5 billion over the next ten to twenty years – could be sufficient to catalyze several hundred billion dollars of public and private investment, and thereby foster global transformation of ocean markets towards sustainability.” Additional recent publications highlighted in “the greenline” include “Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies” and “Implementing the Poznan Strategic Program on Technology Transfer.” [GEF greenline newsletter] [Publication: Report Catalyzing Ocean Finance]