Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was just explaining the nature of the IUCN in the global conservation network.
The World Commission on Protected Areas is the premier global network of protected area professionals, creating and providing leadership and guidance on protected areas.
I lead on marine protected area or MPA issues at the commission and I am providing evidence today on MPAs on behalf of the commission. I've been in a leadership role on MPAs for more than 30 years in the U.K., Europe, and globally.
I think it's worth my starting my evidence by talking about what a marine protected area is. At IUCN we have defined a marine protected area. It is a clearly defined geographical space recognized, dedicated, and managed through legal or other effective means to achieve the long-term conservation of nature, with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. This is equivalent to the definition being used by the Convention on Biological Diversity. The IUCN definition is globally recognized and agreed to.
I want to emphasize that the definition of a protected area is the same on land as it is in the sea, and the conservation expectations are the same. Put simply, a marine protected area is an area of sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biodiversity and of natural and associated cultural resources, managed through legal and other effective means.
Marine protected areas come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and at IUCN, in our guidance we recognize five types, ranging from areas that are strictly protected through to areas that have multiple use and are based on the principles of sustainable use.
In terms of governance—the ways in which protected areas are managed—we recognize four types. They can be managed by governments, by indigenous or local communities, privately, or with mixed governance.
The commonality for all types of protected areas is that they're managed with the long-term conservation of nature at its heart, and where there is a conflict, nature is always the first priority.
What are the benefits of marine protected areas? The benefits are: the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems; helping reverse global and local declines in fish populations and productivity by protecting critical breeding, nursery, and feeding habitats; raising the profile of an area for marine tourism and broadening local economic options; providing opportunities for education, training, heritage, and culture; and providing broad benefits as sites for reference concerning the status of the marine environment.
For conservation alone there are many things marine protected areas do, from maintaining and restoring the structure of ecosystems and their functionality; protecting and maintaining the abundance of key species in communities; protecting habitats from physical damage from fishing; maintaining genetic integrity, ecological functions, and resilience; to acting as an insurance to mitigate any detrimental effects, especially in adjacent areas.
In short, marine protected areas are a key, proven tool for the conservation of nature. They can act as reference ecosystems so that we understand the impact of activities, and they can form part of fisheries management to protect key sites and spawning areas. If we want to know the true potential of the marine environment and how impacted areas compare with what we might call “natural”, then marine protected areas lie at the core of that approach.
We need marine protected areas because current management systems are failing; they're failing to maintain productivity, biological biodiversity, and ecosystems. Global fish catches have been in consistent decline, and marine protected areas are recognized globally as one of the only tools that can help to protect important habitats and representative samples of marine life and to assist in restoring the productivity of oceans.
In terms of progress with marine protected areas, Canada along with most other countries made a clear commitment to meeting international targets for the environment back in 2010. This was under the Convention on Biological Diversity. One of those targets is specifically about marine protected areas. It's called target 11. It says that by 2020 at least 10% of coastal and marine areas, especially areas important for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are to be conserved using protected areas and other effective area-based measures.
When we look at how well countries have done in protecting the environment in this way, around 5.3% of the global ocean is protected. If you look at the jurisdictional area of countries, it rises to 13.2%, and probably by the end of the year about 21 million square kilometres will be under marine protected areas and, for the first time, the area of ocean protected will be larger than the area of land protected.
There are 21 countries that have protected more than 100,000 square kilometres. These include the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Chile, and Indonesia. In this respect it is fantastic to see the renewed commitment of Canada to meet the 10% MPA goal by 2020. Canada currently has protected 50,000 square kilometres in MPAs and ranks at the moment 33rd in the world in terms of area.
In terms of how MPAs relate to fisheries, I've just talked about the target under the Convention on Biological Diversity for MPAs, but there are another 19 targets of equal importance, and there is one target that particularly relates to fisheries, which is target 6. This is the target that countries have signed on to so as to ensure that species are managed and harvested sustainably and that fisheries have no adverse impact on threatened species and vulnerable ecosystems.
There is a very clear international framework in place, and there is clearly a crossover between very strong, comprehensive fisheries measures under target 6 and the protected area measures that are under target 11 of the convention. The problem is that target 11, which is the marine protected area target, is very well reported on and focused on, while target 6 on fisheries is not so well reported.
We have a good body of evidence on the way we make marine protected areas successful. Strictly protected and fully protected marine protected areas have been shown in hundreds of papers in the scientific literature to increase the abundance, biomass, and diversity of fish invertebrate populations. We also know that the benefits accrued relate to a series of different factors and that full protection, alongside good enforcement and management, older marine protected areas, and larger and isolated ones, give the greatest benefits.
So—