UNEP’s Regional Seas Programme plays a crucial role in safeguarding marine biodiversity and ecosystems. By protecting diverse habitats such as mangroves, coral reefs, and deep-sea environments, the Programme fosters resilience and sustainability across global and regional marine ecosystems. Through strategic partnerships, policy integration, and community engagement, the Programme drives effective conservation efforts, ensuring that marine ecosystems can support both current and future generations.
Introduction
Marine and coastal ecosystems are pivotal to global biodiversity, supporting billions by providing food, coastal protection, and economic opportunities. However, these ecosystems face significant threats from human activities, climate change, and pollution. Through its Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans (RSCAPs), Regional Seas programme facilitates comprehensive strategies to conserve marine biodiversity and ensure the sustainable use of ocean resources, essential for both ecological health and human well-being.
Why It Matters
Oceans sustain life on Earth, offering vital ecosystem services like climate regulation, food security, and biodiversity. The pressures of overexploitation, habitat destruction, and climate impacts increasingly threaten these benefits. Protecting marine biodiversity is crucial not only for maintaining ecological balance but also for supporting the economies and livelihoods of communities worldwide, particularly in regions dependent on marine resources. In our ever-evolving quest to safeguard marine ecosystems, protect important habitats, and sustainably manage human activities such as fishing, shipping, tourism etc, the adoption of area-based management approaches has emerged as a pivotal approach. At present, a wide variety of area-based management approaches are in use, each with their own purpose, mandate, guiding authority or application guidance. Some approaches focus on the management of individual maritime sectors operating in a specific area, such as fisheries closure areas, pollution management zones, and seabed mining exclusion areas. Other approaches, such as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), seek to coordinate and balance the needs of several types of activity within the same area.
What We Do
The Regional Seas Programme, collaborates with Contracting Parties, partners, scientific communities, civil societies, indigenous people, local communities and the youth to protect and manage marine and coastal biodiversity via targeted protocols and area-based conservation measures:
- Mangroves and Coral Reefs: Initiatives like the Nairobi Convention's Mangrove Ecosystem Restoration Guidelines and the Global Coral Reef Partnership, and COBSEA Secretariat’s Green Fins initiatives underline efforts to restore and conserve critical habitats that buffer against climate impacts and support marine life.
- Seagrass Beds and Algal Communities: UNEP supports the conservation of seagrasses and algae, which are vital for carbon sequestration and serve as nurseries for marine species, as highlighted during World Seagrass Day.
- Deep Sea and Pelagic Habitats: Programs under conventions like OSPAR address the protection of biodiversity in deep-sea and open-ocean environments, focusing on vulnerable marine ecosystems threatened by industrial activities.
- Integrated Coastal Zone and Marine Spatial Planning: Efforts under the Barcelona and Nairobi Convention’s WIO Symphony tool for MSP facilitate sustainable coastal development, balancing ecological protection with economic activities.
- SPREP’s Pacific Ecosystem Based Adaptation to Climate Change projects in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu incorporate much of the thinking behind GBF Target 7. The Pacific Islands Regional Marine Species Programme (Marine Species Programme, or PIRMSP) is a regional strategy for the cooperative conservation and management of dugongs; marine turtles; whales and dolphins; sharks and rays; and seabirds.
- Abidjan Convention: The Calabar Protocol on Sustainable Mangrove Management.
- Mediterranean Action Plan: Aims to protect marine and coastal environments through specific protocols that address biodiversity conservation and combat pollution.
- COBSEA’s Marine and Coastal Ecosystems Framework: Enhances the management of marine and coastal environments in the East Asian Seas, promoting an integrated Sustainable Blue Economy approach to marine spatial planning, marine protected areas, OECMs, and habitat conservation.
- Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP): Focuses on the conservation of marine biodiversity through the SPAW Protocol, supporting the protection and management of key species and habitats.
