A European environmentalist group and its US partner hope a joint report on marine protected areas will have impact on the EU review of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) next year.
Presenting the report published by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and its American partner The Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC), IEEP spokesman Jonathan Armstrong added that the report on marine protected areas (MPA’s) included the main conclusions of their joint project “Transatlantic Platform for Action on the Global Environment (T-PAGE) “.
T-PAGE, co-funded by the EU Commission to promote transatlantic dialogues at the non-governmental level, has provided a platform for debate and exchange of experiences on the role of marine protected MPA’s in the conservation of marine biodiversity.
The project’s work on MPA’s culminated in a conference in Brussels in May, where the participants agreed that despite legal obligations to implement MPA’s, the actual degree of implementation remains “an ongoing challenge”, Armstrong said. He added that as far as building support goes, experiences on both sides of the Atlantic have shown that it is difficult to prescribe a single best approach, “as both top-down and bottom-up approaches have proven successful in different circumstances”.
Conference participants also agreed that the lack of science was delaying further implementation of MPA’s, and consequently advocated the use of the precautionary approach in decisions on MPA designation and implementation.
Besides pointing to next year’s EU debate on the CFP, Armstrong also observed that the Commission is due to publish its second report on the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Action Plan before the end of this year, as well as a reportassessing the implementation of the habitats directive in all the member states during 2000-2006. He noted that “Marine Protected Areas are likely to feature in both debates”.