By Mary Collins, IUCN WCPA Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group’s Marine Connectivity Working Group (MCWG) Graduate Associate, hosted by the Center for Large Landscape Conservation

Context and challenge 

The Ross Sea is part of the exclusive economic zone for New Zealand’s Antarctic territory, located in the Southern Ocean (figure 1). It is a deep and remote bay that, in 2008, proved to be the most “pristine” piece of the ocean left on Earth, according to researchers with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, who mapped out human impacts on the ocean globally for the first time. It is thus a living laboratory, unlike so much of the oceans, capable of displaying direct impacts of climate change without interference by human impact, so long as impacts remain scarce (CCAMLR).

Figure 1. The Ross Sea Regional Marine Protected Area with protection zones indicated by shading (Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.).

Scientists estimate that about three-quarters of the nutrients that sustain life in the rest of the world’s oceans are produced in the Southern Ocean. The region is home to most of the world’s penguins and whales as well as important commercial fisheries like Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) and toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides and Dissostichus mawsoni). Some of the last unexploited fish populations are also found here, avoiding population declines from most traditional resource uses. Therefore climate change effects on water quality remain the most prevalent threats in the region, followed by the pressures posed by fishery exploitation (CCAMLR; the Guardian).

Approach

Because of the Southern Ocean’s importance to the world’s natural resources and the uniquely remote and unaltered environments in the Ross Sea, New Zealand and the United States proposed designating a regional marine protected area (MPA) in 2012. Through a lengthy five years of negotiations over scientific and diplomatic matters held by the Commission for the Conservation of Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) – an international regime with 24 Member States plus the European Union (figure 2)- revisions and compromises resulted in an agreement over a designation as an MPA that will be in effect for 35-years starting in 2016 (CCAMLR).

The Ross Sea Regional MPA (RSRMPA) is the largest in the world with an area spanning 2,090,046 km2 (806,971 square miles) (figure 1). It is also the first marine park to exist spanning national and international waters (also known as a high-seas MPA or an international MPA), setting a precedent for further international MPA designations. Most notably, zoning within RSRMPA appears opposite from protection levels normally seen in MPAs; the zone covering the largest area (1,606,529 km2 (620,284 square miles)) holds the most stringent protections, while the two smaller zones are not fully protected and permit a degree of research and limited activities. The fully protected zone, an area about the size of France and Spain combined, was designed to provide protection of habitats and bioregions representative of the entire system, to eliminate potential ecosystem threats like fishing, and to support existing and future scientific research and monitoring (Conservation Measure 91-05. 2016).

Because of the region’s remoteness, full protection has little to no effect on local inhabitants and their livelihoods- a luxury that many other areas do not possess. Therefore the RSRMPA planners had the unique ability to protect the entire system as a whole, instead of targeting just the most important areas in a stepping-stone approach. As the world reaches for protection targets like 30 percent protected by 2030, the research that comes out of this area will be instrumental to understanding the effects of climate change on marine systems where little human impact exists and whether similar protections in other regions might produce positive ecological outcomes, despite climate change, and provided that local coastal economies can persist.

Results

A systems approach to stringently conserving the whole range of habitats and species is a significant feat alone, aside from the massive scale and international basis that the RSRMPA set. However, significantly, the protections are set to expire in the year 2052, at which time it may be renewed or modified. This time span is shorter than the life histories of many animals targeted for protection. This was a significant compromise made in order to meet a consensus for the MPA agreement, carrying important implications for future planning. The designation was especially opposed by China and Russia (figure 2), as they operate fishing industries in the remote waters. Currently, they still fish, but their activities are pushed to the fringes of the MPA, where less immature fishes are caught as a result and where competition with orca over fish is decreased (The Guardian). There is concern that when negotiations commence in 2052, there may again be difficulty in finding consensus on protection.

Scientists and policy-makers have reviewed the inner workings of the 5-year negotiations to learn from successes and mistakes to inform processes for designating additional international MPAs. Insights that stalled or facilitated the adoption of the RSRMPA through compromise included economic interests, geopolitics, an erosion of trust, and high-level diplomacy (Brooks et al, 2019). Moving forward, others have taken more open, inclusive, and transparent approaches with concerned parties from early stages of MPA planning, in order to more rapidly and lastingly produce designations.

The process for international cooperation for MPA designation spearheaded by the RSRMPA is gaining traction, aiding policy-makers. By establishing the policy process for high seas MPAs, the RSRMPA is helping conservation policy move into the international collaborative sphere. CCAMLR has used the process to inform MPA proposals for the East Antarctic, Weddell Sea, and Antarctic Peninsula protection, and the United Nations proposed to use the CCAMLR’s Conservation Measure 91–04 for the RSRMPA as a framework for high seas MPAs and to inform the ongoing United Nations negotiations to develop a new International Legally Binding Instrument for the Management of Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (Brooks et al., 2019).

Figure 2. Consensus curve for percentage agreement for each CCAMLR Party, throughout the proposal and negotiation period. Cumulative agreement towards consensus based on CCAMLR annual meeting reports (1982–2011) and participant observation notes (2012–2016) (Brooks et al., 2019).

References

Brooks, C.M. et al., 2019. Reaching consensus for conserving the global commons: The case of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Conservation Letters.

https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12676

CCAMLR. 2020. Marine Protected Areas. https://www.ccamlr.org/en/science/marine-protected-areas-mpas.

Conservation Measure 91-05 (2016), Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area. file:///Users/Mary/Downloads/91-05_11.pdf.

NOAA Fisheries. 2021. Marine Protected Area in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/international-affairs/marine-protected-area-antarcticas-ross-sea.

The Guardian. World’s largest marine park created in Ross Sea in Antarctica in landmark deal. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/28/worlds-largest-marine-park-created-in-ross-sea-in-antarctica-in-landmark-deal.