The MPA Europe project’s new scientific research creates a spillover of knowledge and infuses Europe’s marine policy, planning and communities.
A recent global study published in Science Advances, alongside reports from the European Environment Agency, shows that marine protected areas (MPAs) not only protect biodiversity and enhance climate resilience but also provide species spillover benefits and increased fishing opportunities. However, greater emphasis needs to be placed on effective management, representativeness, coherence and adequacy when completing the network of Europe’s MPAs. So, how should this network be designed to achieve the goal of protecting at least 30% of the EU’s sea area by 2030?
Mapping optimal locations for MPAs
The MPA Europe project, supported by Horizon Europe and UKRI, takes a novel ‘big data’ approach to answer this question. By harnessing significant marine biodiversity and environmental datasets hosted by European and global repositories, including OBIS, GBIF, EMODnet and Bio-ORACLE, the project has created spatially complete and standardised data layers relating to species, habitats, ecosystems, blue carbon and connectivity. Over three million species records have been added into OBIS, and over 95,000 records have been gathered from the scientific community and literature to create a new European Blue Carbon database. A systematic prioritisation process is already underway, and in 2025 an online open-access atlas will be launched, revealing patterns of marine biodiversity and seabed carbon stores across European seas, with optimal networks of MPAs. This atlas will reflect models for 10,000 species’ ranges under the five IPCC scenarios for 2050 and 2100.
Actively engaged
MPA Europe’s approach contributes to many questions raised by the 1st EU Blue Parks Community workshop, including the establishment of strictly protected zones within MPAs, integrating marine protection objectives into maritime spatial planning (MSP) processes, expanding MPA coverage, enhancing connectivity, addressing transboundary issues of MPAs, and fostering stakeholder engagement in MPA design.
MPA Europe has already been presented in over 70 events involving stakeholders across different countries and platforms since the project started in January 2023. Examples include the 3rd Natura 2000 marine biogeographical seminar, the Atlantic & Arctic Lighthouse Weekly Hour webinar, the Baltic Sea stakeholder workshop in partnership with PROTECT BALTIC, and the Black Sea stakeholder workshop in partnership with the MSP Green and MSP4Bio projects. MPA Europe’s stakeholder community of 140 organisations and initiatives includes national authorities, regional seas conventions, sister projects and NGOs, with whom several case studies are being co-designed and co-produced.
The project hopes the EU Blue Parks Community will continue to spark insights and actions, and invites the community to submit abstracts and join the International MPA in MSP conference in July 2025.