Spatial Analysis of Marine Protected Area Networks in Europe’s
The European Topic Centre on inland, coastal and marine waters (ETC/ICM) of European Environmental Agency has published a new technical report, that presents an overview of the spatial distribution of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Europe’s seas established as of 2016 (excluding overseas territories). This report, carried out with the important contribution of ISPRA, represents a rerun and advancement of the spatial statistics and of the coherence analysis run by the on MPA reported data in 2012 and as such provides insight on the observed changes in European MPAs established in the four year period 2013-2016.
The networks of MPAs taken into account in the analysis are those established under the framework of the EU Nature Directives, National designations, and the Regional Sea Conventions as reported in the respective official spatial and tabular databases. The report is an important tool for the European Union and the single Member in order to assess how much remains to be done to respond to the Target 11 of the "Strategic Plan 2011-2020" of the Convention for Biological Diversity, signed in Aichi, which includes, for 2020, the protection of 10% of the oceans and seas of our planet.