Dr Jonathon Howard, NPA Executive member
The Draft Australia’s Sustainable Ocean Plan was recently released for public comment. It sets out a vision to 2040. It highlights the outcomes Australia wants to achieve, and identifies opportunities for collective national action to help tackle key challenges while supporting people’s livelihoods and our growing ocean economy.
The ocean is very important to many people as it provides employment, food, energy, enjoyment and wellbeing benefits, and is home to many important species and ecosystems. The United Nation’s also recognises that the ocean has a role in acting as a sink and reservoir of greenhouse gases, and provides the avenue of transport that underpins global trade.
Now that public feedback has been received on the Sustainable Ocean Plan, the Commonwealth will seek endorsement from State and Territory governments. The hope being that pathways and practical steps for delivering the plan’s actions will commence from 2026 onwards.
The ocean is a shared responsibility, and we need to sustainably manage it through evidence-based decision-making and tools, such as coordinated marine planning. Indeed, many of the submissions to the draft plan called for action to effectively protect marine protected areas and manage threats such as marine pests.
Getting to the detail
This may all sound like good news, but we need to look at what these ‘pathways and practical steps’ might be. There are three fundamental problems associated with the way Australia has declared marine protected areas which can create perverse outcomes. The first being that a marine park may not actually protect the sea life it contains. The second being that the rhetoric around marine parks tends to focus on quantity over quality (the CARE principles of Connectivity, Adequacy, Representation, and Effectiveness are overlooked). The third being that an uneven patchwork of marine parks does not necessarily protect the iconic migratory species such as sharks and rays, tuna, sea turtles, and marine mammals that we all love.
To explain further…
Marine parks vary by the level of protection they offer, with common types including sanctuary zones (no-take), habitat protection zones, general use zones, and special purpose zones. Sanctuary/Green Zones offer the highest level of protection, prohibiting extractive activities such as fishing, mining, and drilling. By contrast General Use/Blue Zones allow a wider range of activities and are often used to support sustainable commercial industries and recreational activities.
This means although the government claimed in 2024 that marine parks now cover 52% of Australia’s waters – it was in fact a bit of rhetoric. For 30% of the nation’s waters, the status provided allows threats to biodiversity such as mining, mining exploration, and commercial fishing. The other 22% of Australia’s marine park-designated waters simply do not permit these extractive activities.
Current marine parks are not biogeographically representative
Super imposed onto the rhetoric is what might be called ‘marine park branch stacking’. The ocean can be divided into bioregions. There are six different ones surrounding Australia. In applying CARE principles there should be a mosaic of marine parks across these various bioregions. However about 66% of these marine park waters are located in four of Australia’s offshore territories, two of which are unoccupied by humans. While these parks are among the biggest globally, they exist in areas largely free from direct human threats. Only about 8% of Australia’s MPAs are zoned and located in a way that mitigates human impacts and delivers conservation benefits.
In ignoring evidence-based conservation practices that i) emphasises marine parks should protect the marine life they contain and ii) ignores the CARE principles, Australia has been making a mockery of Target 3 in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which calls for protection of 30% of oceans in areas of biodiversity importance and representation. Australia has simply ‘picked the low hanging fruit’ and the ‘hard yards’ ahead will be to focus on species and features of high ecological importance, where threats to their existence can be meaningfully abated through formal marine protection.
Thus, when the Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt announced only a few months ago that the government would commit to 30% of Australia’s waters being “highly protected” by 2030, it was a welcome first step in doing the ‘hard yards’ as it is a pledge that means banning extractive activities like fishing, drilling, and mining in our marine parks.