Marine Biodiversity: Opportunities for Global Governance and Management Coherence

Abstract

Marine biodiversity has been declining globally due to overexploitation, habitat destruction and alteration, pollution, increased pressures from climate change and ocean acidification. A number of legal instruments are in place to address marine biodiversity pressures through appropriate conservation and management measures, with the most notable ones being the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This chapter provides a brief overview of the relationship between UNCLOS and the CBD with respect to marine biodiversity management through the lens of a promising integrative and emerging tool—the CBD ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs). It argues that the EBSA process—a global exercise to describe marine areas of ecological importance—can inform decision-making and assist in the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity. In this connection, the categorisation of EBSAs can provide a first step towards the identification of management options, which can be further developed through the use of cumulative impact assessments of biodiversity pressures for each EBSA and respective EBSA features.