Giving Compass' Take:

• Research shows that a market-based approach that incentivizes fishing market involvement could aid the effort of ocean conservation. 

• How are you getting involved in ocean conservation projects? Are there opportunities in your area to do so?

• Learn more about the role of donors in funding the ocean. 

In the first days of 2020, the Pacific Ocean archipelago nation of Palau took the momentous step of protecting 80%—500,000 square kilometers (193,051 square miles)—of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) from fishing.

The move is at once a cultural tradition, a far-sighted strategy for future generations, and an example of the level of conservation needed to protect ocean biodiversity and habitat, researchers say.

Why don’t more coastal and island nations dive into this large-scale regenerative practice? Economics is among the major obstacles, according to Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez, a doctoral student at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Various scientists and organizations recognize the need to protect 10 to 30% of the ocean,” says Villaseñor-Derbez. “But it’s very difficult for a country to conserve a region where extractive activities are so profitable, even if conservation may bring benefits in the future.”

To find a way around this conundrum, Villaseñor-Derbez and fellow Environmental Market Solutions Lab members Christopher Costello, also of UC Santa Barbara, and John Lynham of the University of Hawaii, have simulated and tested a system that allows a conserving country the ability to offset the cost of conservation and recapture the benefits of protected areas within their maritime territory.

“Well-designed fishing markets can incentivize countries to engage in large-scale marine conservation,” Lynham says.

Read the full article about ocean conservation by Sonia Fernandez at Futurity.