Major Goals for Ocean Protection and Fisheries Should Have One Scorecard

Four years ago, nearly every country on Earth committed to two ambitious marine biodiversity targets: protect 30% of the ocean and manage 100% of fisheries to support ecosystems and sustainable use, with a goal of accomplishing both by 2030. The commitments fall under the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, a global agreement for halting and reversing the loss of nature.

In a new paper in Marine Policy, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and co-authored by an international team that included the two of us, we argue that the world is unlikely to meet the spirit of either commitment unless the two targets are pursued in concert with each other.

Two agendas, one ocean

Fisheries management and ocean protection share a fundamental goal: healthy, abundant, and diverse marine life. Achieving that goal results in well-balanced ecosystems and strong, stable fisheries.

A growing body of research shows that well-placed and enforced marine protected areas (MPAs) can help to rebuild biodiversity, provide safe havens for ocean life to feed and breed, and strengthen the resilience of marine ecosystems to threats, including overfishing and climate change. Likewise, well-managed fisheries surrounding MPAs ease pressure at protected-area boundaries and can help to sustain the healthy ecosystems and food webs that MPAs aim to safeguard.

To date, though, regulators and advocates have pursued the two 2030 goals on largely separate tracks, through different national and international agencies, objectives, and metrics, and often focusing on different parts of the ocean. Many large MPAs have been created in remote regions where little fishing occurs, minimizing conflict with the fishing industry but also limiting opportunities to demonstrate that protection could benefit biodiversity and economies. Fisheries managers, for their part, rarely report stock-by-stock results in ways that connect to broader biodiversity goals, even though in many cases their mandates now include such reporting.

The result is a missed opportunity. To address this, the global community needs shared measures of success that experts can apply across ocean protection and fisheries management targets.

The risk: A hollow 30 by 30

With 2030 approaching, the pressure to show progress on the 30% target is intense. This pressure could push countries to count weak measures as “protection,” for example, by relabeling existing fisheries management areas as conservation areas without changing what happens on the water.

That would be a hollow victory. The point of 30 by 30 is to rebuild marine life, not to redraw maps.

A practical fix: Measure the outcomes

We propose a straightforward solution: evaluate fisheries management and protected areas using shared, outcome-based reference points.

For example, scientists and fishery managers could use indicators including total fish biomass, a widely used measure of how much marine life an area supports, across sustainably fished waters and protected areas alike. Those experts could use other indicators, such as the recovery of threatened populations or the condition of critical habitats, where species- or habitat-specific targets make more sense. The point is consistency: Hold conservation and fisheries management to common, measurable metrics.

Under this approach, protected areas would be expected to deliver biodiversity outcomes that go beyond what sustainable and ecosystem-informed fisheries management alone can achieve, while recognizing that recovery takes time and that the goal is a shared trajectory, not an instant verdict.

The data and tools to do this already exist in many locations. The Reef Life Survey has collected standardized underwater observations from thousands of sites worldwide. Long-running scientific fisheries surveys have done similar work across continental shelves for decades. Newer methods, including environmental DNA sampling, make biodiversity monitoring faster and cheaper than ever.

From parallel tracks to shared ground

A common yardstick won’t fix every problem in ocean governance. But it would close one of the most consequential gaps: the disconnect between two agendas that should reinforce each other and the absence of a clear, evidence-based test for whether protection is actually working.

Our proposed approach wouldn’t be a tool for ranking fishing against conservation, or for removing protected status from areas that haven’t yet recovered. Instead, we see it as a tool for coordination to help two key stakeholders of ocean policy to advance their goals based on a shared vision of success.

Making this shift now could mean the difference between governments claiming—but failing—to meet these targets and meeting them in a way that restores and maintains ocean health, an outcome that would benefit nature, economies, and the billions of people worldwide that depend on wild-caught seafood.

Jim Palardy leads The Pew Charitable Trusts’ conservation science team, which is part of the conservation support and science portfolio that Winnie Roberts directs.