Climate-smart marine protected areas can shield biota from global warming

Climate-smart marine protected areas can shield biota from global warming

Subject :Environment

Section: Climate change

Context: Marine Protected Areas (MPA) should be established in places where climate change is least likely to harm biodiversity, an expert said at the ongoing fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress in Canada.

More on the News:

• Experts gathered at the congress to discuss the impacts of climate change on MPAs, which are designated areas managed for the long-term conservation of marine resources and ecosystem services.
• Countries agreed to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2022.
• Climate change is driving ocean temperature and sea level rise. The waters are turning acidic.
• Temperatures of the top few metres of the sea have increased by approximately 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade over the past 100 years, according to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
• Experts find that 6-12 per cent of the water column in the high seas will be less affected by the changing climate. These will be great places to have benchmark MPAs.

Marine protected areas:

• Marine protected areas (MPA) are protected areas of seas, oceans, estuaries.
• MPAs restrict human activity for a conservation purpose, typically to protect natural or cultural resources.
• Such marine resources are protected by local, state, territorial, native, regional, national, or international authorities and differ substantially among and between nations.
• This variation includes different limitations on development, fishing practices, fishing seasons and catch limits, moorings and bans on removing or disrupting marine life.
• In some case, MPAs also provide revenue for countries, potentially equal to the income that they would have if they were to grant companies permissions to fish.
• The MPA network in India has been used as a tool to manage natural marine resources for biodiversity conservation and for the well-being of the people dependent on it.
• Scientific monitoring and traditional observations confirm that depleted natural marine resources are getting restored and/or pristine ecological conditions have been sustained in well managed MPAs.
• India has designated four legal categories of protected areas:

• There are 24 MPAs in peninsular India and more than 100 MPAs in the country’s 2 islands.