OSPAR's Network of Marine Protected Areas

Since 2005, all 12 Contracting Parties (CPs) bordering the North-East Atlantic have nominated sites to the OSPAR Network ofMarine Protected Areas (MPA) both in their national waters as well as collectively in areas beyond national jurisdiction. By the end of 2015, the network comprised 423 MPAs with a total surface area of 789,125 km² or 5.8 % of the OSPAR Maritime Area.

The OSPAR technical group for progressing work on the establishment and management of a network of marine protected areas in the North East Atlantic met in Lisbon, Portugal from the 13-15 October 2015. Two of the main activities for 2016 will be it better understand how sufficient the network of MPAs is from an ecological perspective, the other to understand whether the network is sufficiently well managed, eventually leading to help us understand whether these measures are having the desired effect.

Assessment sheet on OSPAR Marine Protected Areas