Nature conservation, to curb biodiversity loss and to mitigate the other planetary crises (pollution and climate change), can be pursued without completely excluding humans.
Thus, a group of scientists who, focusing on the protection of marine life populations, argue that it is possible to reconcile the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity with the presence and uses they are subjected to by coastal communities.
In December 2022, at the United Nations’ 15th global biodiversity summit (COP15), with the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Agreement, governments worldwide agreed to protect 30% of the seas and oceans by 2030, through the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs).
However, these researchers argue that, although strict MPAs, in which fishing is prohibited, are the most effective at recovering fish populations, there are less rigid alternatives that seek to balance the needs and cultural dynamics of local communities that directly depend on the oceans with the conservation of marine life.
For David Gill, from Duke University (United States of America) and first author of the article published in PNAS, in areas with scarce yet culturally relevant fishing resources, “it would not be ethical to deprive local and Indigenous peoples of the right to harvest and eat fish,” he says in a statement.
Thus, in such contexts, the team proposes the creation of multi-use MPAs, which do not exclude human activities, but implement rules to regulate fishing. According to the researchers, the study revealed that both multi-use MPAs and strictly protected MPAs have a 97% probability of improving fish populations.
But Gill warns that none of them will achieve the desired results unless they are equipped with adequate human resources and unless they are the subject of “sustainable-use regulations.”
Dominic Andradi-Brown, from the conservation organization WWF and another of the article’s authors, states that “our results show that major gains for nature do not have to come at the expense of excluding people.”
And he adds that ocean conservation designed to allow ‘a variety of uses’ could be successful, “provided that there is good management.”
One of the study’s main conclusions, according to Gill, is that ‘context matters’. For the scientist, ‘we need to consider that a mix of conservation approaches will be best for the local context’, noting that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution and that biodiversity protection should not exclude humans, especially local and Indigenous communities, in a ‘fortress conservation’ logic.
