IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Head, Marine Conservation
Natural England
Northminster House
Peterborough Cambs
PE1 1UA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1733 455 234 , cell +44 7702253031
Fax: +44 1733 568 834
Email: dan.laffoley@naturalengland.org.uk
dan.laffoley@googlemail.com

 As part of the World Commission on Protected Areas we work in partnership with IUCN's Global Programme on Protected Areas and IUCN’s Global Marine programme, and have members in many of the countries of the world that border an ocean or sea.

Our roles, through the unique reach, influence, accumulated knowledge and expertise of our members, are:

• Convening, coordinating and networking, in order to help governments and others to plan, develop and implement MPAs, MPA networks, and the global system, and integrate them with all other sea and coastal uses and maritime sectors;
• Ensuring better application of the best science, technical and policy advice on MPAs, MPA networks, and the global system;
• Generating, synthesising and disseminating knowledge on MPAs, often in the form of best practice advice, to a diverse range of players;

The activities of the WCPA-Marine program are conducted on national, regional and global levels and are intended to increase the capacity of management institutions and practitioners while building a sustainable network of globally-representative marine protected areas.

On the national level, WCPA-Marine is sharing knowledge directly with practitioners and providing them with tools and information on MPA management.

Regionally, WCPA-Marine is strengthening its networks and building better communications between its members world-wide.

On the global level, WCPA-Marine is heightening the importance of MPAs for the preservation of marine biodiversity and sustainable use of biological resources and the communities that depend on them through global programs such as World Heritage and the International Coral Reef Initiative.

We will be structuring our work around three themes that all contribute towards building effectively managed, lasting and representative networks of MPAs. The three themes are:

• improving the coverage of what we have;
• obtaining greater effectiveness out of what we do; and
• sustaining what we have into the future.

With these words, Achim Steiner urged participants at IMPAC 1 of the need to step up and scale up our efforts in protecting the world’s vast and increasingly vulnerable marine environment from climate change, pollution, resource depletion and other threats. No longer are we faced with small scale impacts, but a footprint from human innovation and industry that is spreading out across our widest oceans to their deepest depths. Unchecked such impacts will continue to serially deplete our seas, but carefully managed they may lead to sustainable use.

The measures we take to protect marine wildlife and the environment need to keep pace with such impacts. They need to be meaningful at the large scales of physical processes that underlie how our oceans function, but also be increasingly resilient in the face of future impacts from climate change and surface ocean acidification. Part of the measures that are needed is an increasingly urgent concerted international action to establish a global system of representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2012. This is a target the global community set itself at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.

WCPA – Marine has a unique role to play in such efforts and on a day-to-day basis helping nations establish MPAs. Since I took up the post of Vice Chair earlier this year I have travelled widely and held extensive discussions with marine advisors, decision makers, MPA practitioners and interest groups. This has included many meetings with individuals within IUCN, and also in our partner organisations, on how to best support the global community and bring such changes about. We need to ensure that the limited capacity, efforts and resources of WCPA – Marine are used to maximum effect. This is so we make the greatest possible contribution towards supporting the global community on its work on MPAs. The most effective way to deliver this is by working with our Members and partners to determine the priority projects and programmes that WCPA should now embark on to ‘really make a difference’. This consultation, to be undertaken between August and the end of 2006, forms the heart of the WCPA – Marine Plan of Action. The following text explains more about the Plan of Action, the consultation on global priorities, and how you may get involved.