India’s blue revolution needs more marine protected areas, says new research

India, with its long coastline, has a major opportunity to boost fisheries yield by expanding Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along its Exclusive Economic Zone, and in parallel, protect the ocean’s capacity to capture carbon and boost biodiversity, says a large scale study reported on Wednesday by a group of scientists in the journal Nature.

Expanding the realm of MPAs in the world’s oceans presents a big opportunity to raise food production, enhance carbon storage and preserve a lot more of threatened biodiversity for all countries, the authors argue. They stress the need for greater international cooperation to extend the boundaries of protection. Although 7% of the world’s oceans are earmarked or designated as MPAs currently, in practice, that figure drops to 2.7% enjoying full or high level of protection, the team led by Enric Sala of the Pristine Seas project of the National Geographic Society said. Although many countries lower protection levels because of the view that protected areas prevent extraction of food and materials, the scientists contend that expanding MPAs would actually produce overflow effects in other parts, which would raise the yield of food.