Marine nature conservation and fisheries - management of interacting and conflicting interests - a road map for the future

The establishment of Marine Protected Areas lags far behind the establishment of Terrestrial Protected Areas. In many countries a lack of consensus between nature conservation and fishery interests has complicated and inhibited progress and delayed the establishment of Marine Protected Areas for both conservation and fishery purposes. To achieve a more balanced weighing of fishery and nature conservation interests in the future, there is a need to improve and enforce the coordination and harmonization of conservation and fishery objectives. An appropriate instrument for this coordination is a Marine Spatial Planning process that involves all relevant stakeholders in the planning and decision-making process. Strategic Environmental Assessment for plans and programmes, and Environmental Impact Assessment for projects are commonly used tools for environmental management but have not, so far, been used for capture fisheries. The diversity of fisheries and the drastic effects of certain fisheries on the environment are strong arguments for introducing these procedures as complements to existing fisheries management and assessment tools. This would improve information on the environmental effects of fisheries relevant to the planning and decision-making process pertaining to conflicts between fishery and marine protected areas. In the future, legal management of Marine Protected Areas should differ depending on whether they were designated for nature conservation purposes, under conservation law or for fishery purposes, under fishery law. When these two interests conflict in a Marine Protected Area established for nature conservation purposes, the fishery should be managed under the conservation law, as other environmentally relevant activities.