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Conservation

Making marine protected areas work

Nature volume 506, pages 167–168 (2014)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 19 February 2014

Globally consistent surveys of five factors influencing the success of marine protected areas — age, size, isolation, protection and enforcement — reveal that only when all five are present does nature thrive. See Letter p.216

In the past few years, several huge marine protected areas (MPAs) have been created in the Pacific and Indian oceans, totalling more than 1.6 million square kilometres. That might sound like a large area, but even when combined with every other MPA on the planet, still less than around 2% of the world's oceans are fully protected. In response to this conservation shortfall, coastal nations have committed to increasing the amount of protected area in their territorial waters to at least 10% by 2020. However, even if this target is met, the actual conservation value may be limited because MPAs often exist in name only — they do not truly provide protection. On page 216 of this issue, Edgar et al.1 provide key insights into why so many of the world's MPAs are failing to meet their full potential and describe a clear path forward for achieving better conservation outcomes.

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Figure 1: Five factors for effective protection.

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  1. Benjamin S. Halpern is in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA, and in the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London, UK.,

    Benjamin S. Halpern

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  1. Benjamin S. Halpern
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Correspondence to Benjamin S. Halpern.

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Halpern, B. Making marine protected areas work. Nature 506, 167–168 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13053

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