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Scientists and Conservationists Issue Urgent Open Letter to World Leaders on MPAs

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Over 70 scientists and conservationists from Chile, Argentina, Norway, US, UK, across the EU and other countries, released an open letter to world leaders expressing deep concern over damaging industrial activities occurring within marine protected areas (MPAs) around the globe. The letter, which comes as delegates gather for the UN Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, calls for urgent action to effectively protect these vital ecosystems. 

The letter signers warn that ongoing harmful activities, such as mining, bottom trawling, and large-scale aquaculture, are undermining the conservation benefits of MPAs and threatening the biodiversity they are meant to protect. The letter highlights the growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating the incompatibility of these activities with the goals of MPAs.

As Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, a signatory, stated, “as global leaders head into two weeks of meetings related to protecting 30% of land and marine ecosystems around the world by the year 2030, we have to make sure that these protections are actually enforced. There are too many threats from industrial activities to existing protected areas, not to mention new ones that must be created. National governments have to do more to end all industrial extractive and damaging activities within marine protected areas.”

This open letter follows a report from May that highlights how governments are falling short on effective biodiversity protections in the world’s largest 100 MPAs. That research found governments have often been slow to implement effective management strategies and failed to restrict a range of damaging activities from taking place in MPAs, such as harmful industrial- scale fishing and aquaculture.

“MPAs are meant to deliver social and ecological outcomes for nature and people,” said Bárbara Horta e Costa, Researcher at Centro de Ciências do Mar (CCMAR) in Portugal, who also signed the letter. “Industrial activities within MPAs hinder achieving those goals.”

The letter calls out a specific example in the Chilean-Patagonia region — one of the most pristine ecosystems in the world — of the growing threat of open-net pen industrial salmon aquaculture. 416 concessions have been granted to salmon farming companies to operate within Chilean protected waters, including many national reserves and parks. There are over 100 more applications seeking to operate additional industrial salmon farms in Chile’s protected areas. The negative ecosystem impacts from salmon farming are well-documented and include oxygen depletion, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, and habitat destruction.

“We call for urgent action to address the damaging impacts of open-net salmon farming within marine protected areas in Chile. This unchecked expansion threatens biodiversity, ecosystems, and the integrity of these conservation areas. Salmon farming is known to cause severe environmental damage,” stated Alejandro Pérez-Matus, a signatory from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

The letter also calls out “sustainable” aquaculture certification programs, aquaculture companies, and consumers to better understand the urgency and rationale for the ambition of greater conservation of marine ecosystems and need for mechanisms and markets that seek sustainable production. Many of the threats facing protected areas come from increased consumer demand. But sustainable fishing practices and marine protected areas can coexist.

Mark Costello, professor at Nord University, Norway signed the letter and noted that “papers published this year show that MPAs do not displace fishing, there is abundant evidence of coastal and offshore MPAs benefiting fisheries, and show no evidence of a fishery ever experiencing losses due to an MPA – but often show losses due to overfishing.”

Norway and Chile together account for about 75 percent of the world’s farmed salmon production. In both countries, salmon farms obtain sustainable certification labels despite operating beyond their permits, damaging the environment, falsifying records, and operating within marine protected areas.

As Norwegian Marine Scientists Per-Erik Schulze and Randi Storhaug wrote in May of this year, “it seems these certifications are now acting as a shield that protects certain companies and enables them to destroy the environment. More recently, aquaculture certifications have weakened the concept of protected areas, turning them into paper parks by allowing industrial production that is directly incompatible with their actual purpose.” Per-Erik also added his name to this letter.

The scientists and conservationists hope their letter will galvanize national governments and global leaders who will be at CBD COP16 discussing the protection of the world’s biodiversity and 30 percent of land and marine resources, giving them the opportunity to act and spur action to end industrial, extractive, and damaging activities occurring within marine protected areas. We all rely upon the rich biodiversity of the sea.

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