WCC 2012 Res 076 - Activity Report

ECO has worked in numerous fora including at the IUCN World Congress 2016, and in those preceding the Jeju Congress, to press for increased Marine protection, spatial planning and the formal legal establishment of substantial areas of no-take marine reserves, other area based protections, and the establishment of species specific sanctuaries such as the habitat of the Maui and Hector's dolphins around New Zealand. We have rejected the Bogus Benthic Protected Areas (BPAs) put in place in New Zealand's EEZ by a new minister of fisheries who was ambushed by the New Zealand fishing industry Deep Water Group. We have pressed CCAMLR to establish a network of MPAs in the Southern Ocean, have participated int eh UNICOPLOS and UN BBNJ processes to achieve MPA; we have rejected utterly feeble NZ proposals for MPAs put forward by the previous NZ government.

ECO supports the idea of certification but we are well aware that the governance, incentives and client relationships of such schemes are vital. We have long since lost any confidence in the Marine Stewardship Council certification schemes, which favour the client and serve as an alternative to taking real remedial action, while conferring "greenwash" on the clients. The costs of appeals have been raised so that these are well beyond our means and yet the lack of appeals is claimed as evidence of good decisions. They're not.

ECO has pressed in international negotiations and via the Scientific Committees of CCAMLR, SPRFMO, and a variety of other forums including domestic NZ processes in the drafting of text and discussions of implementation of measures to protect areas of the Southern Ocean, the South Pacific, the high seas, and in New Zealand's own EEZ and Territorial Sea with genuine MPAs. We have and continue to challenge fake ones MPAs such as the NZ Benthic Protected Areas. We endorse the concept of indigenous protected areas and have supported these in the NZ territorial sea.