Undoubtedly the Federal Labor government needed a headline grabber at the start of the Nature Positive Summit, after what has been a dismal first term for the for the environment. So, it comes as no surprise that the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has declared “the Heard and McDonald Island Marine Park would quadruple in size”. The minister continued “the decision meant Australia would protect 52% of its ocean territory, far more than the global 30% target by 2030 that the government signed up to two years ago”.
But fishing is still allowed in the Heard and McDonald Island Marine Park. In fact, Australia allows commercial fishing in 37 of its 44 marine parks, so what does protected area even mean?
The rock star headline of the of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in December 2022 is the catchy ‘30 by 30 target’. It alludes to the agreement on 30 per cent of terrestrial, freshwater and marine areas being protected by 2030, specifically “Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically”.
That sounds really positive unless you dive into HOW protected areas are defined in this context and WHAT ‘effectively managed’ means. The definition of ‘protected area’ and ‘effective management’ was created by the IUCN, specifically the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). And all was fine until 1992.
Following the 1992 IUCN World Parks Congress, a new system of categorising protected areas was developed. Key was that new categories were introduced that allowed resource extraction. Until 1992 there were just 4 categories:
After 1992 there was a push to introduce new categories that allowed extractive activities. The sordid history of how this change came about is recounted in the 2005 paper, “Rethinking protected area categories and the new paradigm”.
By the time of the 2002 IUCN World Parks Congress two new categories were adopted
As would be expected there has been an explosion of ‘protected areas’ since, with most growth being in the new categories.
For example, the new category V meant that traditional farming lands of the Andes, traditional coffee growing areas of Central America and Mexico, long settled landscapes of the eastern USA and Canada and rice terraces of the Philippines could all be termed protected areas, even though they had been heavily modified to meet human needs. No surprise that many don’t see this as conservation!
Category VI went even further; with the stated hope it be widely adopted as a means of linking conservation and development. With commercial scale extraction now allowed in the definition of a protected area, there was a rapid expansion of areas deemed ‘protected’. The 2005 paper questioned if almost half (47.9%) of these new PAs were real. Category VI has allowed governments worldwide to include massive forest areas, which are heavily logged, in their protected area commitments.
For example, Australia claims to have 22% of its giant landmass as protected areas already, but over 62% of that is through the use of category V and VI.
Without these not-really-protected areas, only 8% of Australia’s landmass would count as protected.
Australia isn’t alone in using semantics to fulfil its international obligations. A December 2022 article by George Monbiot, Protection Racket, said of the UK, “On paper, it has one of the highest proportions of protected land in the rich world, at 28%”, continuing that the reality was somewhat different, “One analysis suggests that only 5% of our land meets the international definition of a protected area. Even these scraps are at risk, as scarcely anyone is left to enforce the law: the regulators have been stripped to the bone and beyond”. And, it seems his prediction was correct, as in the last week it was reported that, the amount of land that is “effectively protected” for nature in England has declined to just 2.93%, despite government promises to conserve 30% of it by 2030.
The authors of the 2005 paper made very clear their thoughts on the problems of semantics when it comes to the establishment of protected areas, going as far as saying “Category V has been used or proposed for use in a manner that tortures the notion of PA so badly as to make it unrecognizable”, and concluding, “The vision of a humanised PAs presented by the new paradigm will lead to a biologically impoverished planet”.
There is no getting away from the authors’ predictions having been clearly borne out. Going back to the text of the target, it states that ‘sustainable use … is fully consistent with conservation outcomes’ and that protected areas ‘are effectively conserved and managed’. Which should lead us to the question “How is that enforced?”. The answer is that it isn’t. The IUCN WCPA accepts that it has no control over the ability of national governments to enforce these provisions and to finance ‘effective management’.
So, to not upset any government, it allows four types of ‘effective management’, ranging from ‘evidence based’ (which is high cost) to ‘assumption based’ (which costs nothing and achieves nothing).
The question of businesses engaged in ‘sustainable use’ in these protected areas paying for effective management, monitoring and enforcement is not being asked because putting it on the table would violate the neoliberal, free-market consensus. The most obvious application of the business pays principle would be in fishing, since marine protected areas almost always allow commercial fishing.
For example, auditors in EU highlight only 1% of 3,000 supposedly ‘protected’ areas in the Mediterranean ban fishing. A 2018 analysis of Europe’s seas confirmed destructive trawling is more intense inside official EU marine sanctuaries, while endangered fish are more common outside them. In the UK 97% of marine protected areas are subject to bottom-trawling.
As already mentioned, Australia allows commercial fishing in 37 of its 44 marine parks. Which leads to the question what a ‘marine park’ is really for? Certainly not for the protection of marine wildlife. In addition, there is growing concern about the question of high number of fishing vessels ‘going dark’. “A ship’s crew may turn off its AIS broadcast for a variety of legitimate reasons, but this behaviour may indicate that a vessel is hiding its location and identity to conceal illegal activities like fishing in no-take protected areas or entering another country’s waters without authorisation,” said Oceana. An investment in transparency and traceability is key, but while ‘assumption based’ management of protected areas is allowed the whole category is completely misleading.
So, whilst conservation NGOs and academics celebrated the adoption of the headline grabbing 30 by 30 target, nobody felt the need to ask the real question: “Will the substance behind the hype be of any use to biodiversity?”. Sadly, the answer is most likely going to be ‘No.”
Lynn Johnson is a physicist by education and has worked as an executive coach and a strategy consultant for over 20 years. In her work she pushes for systemic change, not piecemeal solutions, this includes campaigning for modernising the legal trade in endangered species, to help tackle the illegal wildlife trade.
