How Gabon provided a blueprint for protecting our oceans!

Gabon’s network of marine protected areas provides a blueprint that could be used in many other countries experts say. Since announcing a new MPA network in 2014, Gabon has created 20 protected areas increasing protection of the Gabonese waters from 1% to 26%. This new paper was published by Gabonese policymakers, NGOs, and researchers from the University of Exeter.

It suggests a four-step approach for countries and donors:

1. Governments must build and maintain their research and implementation capacity, ensuring scientific evidence underpins policy decisions.
2. Countries should make public pledges on marine conservation targets, signalling their commitment to the international community and potential donors.
3. The conservation community should respond by helping to create or strengthen the country’s environmental agencies either directly or, if financial safeguards are weak, via international organisations.
4. Each implementation agency should lead on developing national marine conservation frameworks, working with stakeholders and donors to produce plans that are ambitious but politically feasible, combining top-down initiatives with bottom-up approaches as much as possible.

This is very good because oceans are being damaged because of our actions toward the Oceans and all of the billions of tons of plastic that we are not recycling but instead, we are throwing it away in the oceans! This is poisoning our oceans and killing many animals in the ocean! If only we can establish a law here in the USA and all of the other coastal countries like how Gabon did, we can finally reduce ocean pollution and treat the ocean like how we treat ourselves!

Let’s make our earth a better place to live for our future generations to come. There is no planet B and it’s only us who can make the difference.

Source: University of Exeter