Marine Protected Area (MPA)

A marine protected area is a geographically defined sea area managed for the long-term conservation of nature, ranging from multiple-use zones to fully protected no-take marine reserves. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal framework set the ‘30 by 30’ goal of protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030; coverage stood near 8 percent in the mid-2020s, much of it weakly protected. Enforcement and ‘paper park’ designation remain the central problems.