Mexico on Track to Protect 30% of Its Marine Area by 2030

Susana Perera-Valderrama (), Laura Olivia Rosique- de la Cruz, Hansel Caballero-Aragón, Sergio Cerdeira-Estrada, Raúl Martell-Dubois and Rainer Ressl
Additional contact information
Susana Perera-Valderrama: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico
Laura Olivia Rosique- de la Cruz: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico
Hansel Caballero-Aragón: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico
Sergio Cerdeira-Estrada: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico
Raúl Martell-Dubois: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico
Rainer Ressl: National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Liga Periférico—Insurgentes Sur 4903, Parques del Pedregal, Tlalpan, Mexico City 14010, Mexico

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-21

Abstract: Mexico has committed to protecting 30% of its marine territory by 2030 to comply with Target 3 of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted during the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of meeting this commitment by determining the marine extent of conservation measures based on legally established Marine Protected Areas and areas that meet the criteria to be considered as Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) and determining the marine extent of areas proposed in various conservation planning exercises that can be created as any of the area-based instruments that exist in Mexico. The total coverage of existing and proposed areas was calculated by merging the dataset to remove duplicates and dissolving the boundaries between polygons to determine the total area. Spatial analysis was carried out in ArcGIS using geoprocessing tools. Currently, more than 25% of Mexico’s marine area is legally protected or conserved, with federal marine protected areas covering more than 22% of the Exclusive Economic Zone. The legally established areas that can be considered OECMs cover about 3% of the marine territory. We found that more than 9% of Mexico’s Economic Exclusive Zone contains areas of high conservation importance that are not covered by any area-based instrument. This study shows that Mexico has the potential to protect or conserve 32.8% of its marine territory by 2030.

Keywords: legal protection; marine conservation; marine policy; biodiversity conservation targets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/19/14101/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/19/14101/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:19:p:14101-:d:1246136

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().