In 2022, the world’s nations committed to protecting 30% of their land and sea by 2030 (the so-called “30×30” initiative). At sea, this will require a massive buildup of marine protected areas (MPAs), and countries have been announcing new ones regularly. But there’s also a different, less familiar option for meeting the 30% target: “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs).
OECMs, a relatively new term, differ from MPAs in that they are not necessarily designed to protect biodiversity — they just happen to do so. For example, a marine area where fishing activities are restricted and biodiversity benefits as a side effect could qualify as an OECM. So could a sacred or historic site that’s closed to human activity.
Conservationists say OECMs could bring many positives, including the development or recognition of de facto conservation areas led by local communities or Indigenous peoples. They could, for example, recognize and build support for bottom-up management systems aimed at protecting small-scale fishers from competition with industrial fishing.
In the Global South, the conservation community is beginning to navigate the new OECM terrain. On Oct. 5, GIZ, Germany’s main development agency, and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA), a scientific body based in Tanzania, co-hosted a webinar on the future of OECMs in Africa.
“MPAs are frequently regarded as delusory and top-down,” Arthur Tuda, WIOMSA’s executive secretary, told Mongabay in an email. “OECMS would provide a wide range of options for balancing marine use while also providing conservation outcomes.”
“They bring more inclusiveness to marine conservation as well as more realistic ways to balance development and conservation. The roles of various governance systems and actors in biodiversity conservation are recognized, promoted and made visible by OECMs,” Tuda said.
However, Tuda and other experts have also expressed concern that the OECM system could be abused by countries or area managers seeking credit for meeting 30×30 targets.
“As with paper parks, there is the risk of paper OECMs created to beat 30×30,” Tuda said.
Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, also warned of the rise of paper OECMs as the 2030 deadline nears.
“All kind of areas where the fisheries are managed will claim to be OECMs, that is clear,” Pauly told Mongabay. “Especially in six years, when the countries say, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to invent something that allows us to claim that we have 30%.’”
Some observers consider the OECM concept or name clunky: One participant at the International Marine Protected Areas Congress held in February in Vancouver, Canada, referred to them as “other extremely complicated measures,” and a GIZ staffer said OECM was “a terrible word” during the recent webinar.
Yet OECMs are expected to be a crucial part of 30×30 efforts. Currently, there are only 195 reported marine OECMs, covering 0.11% of the world’s oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), which maintains an OECM map. But that’s because the concept is relatively new, and only six countries globally have designated marine OECMs. Reference to “other effective area-based conservation measures” was first made in the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreement, and OECMs were only formally defined in a 2018 CBD decision. To qualify as an OECM, an area must be managed and must deliver “sustained” and “effective” on-site conversation benefits.
Among the conservation and development opportunities experts say that marine OECMs present are “recognition and support of customary tenure rights,” “recognition and inclusion of diverse forms of conservation” and “greater balance between achieving biodiversity benefits and human well-being,” according to a 2023 study that surveyed a panel of marine policymakers and practitioners.