Lessons to be learned and inspiration to be gained for states around the Baltic from successful management work at the Australian Great Barrier Reef – that was the object of a WWF-sponsored workshop/seminar in Stockholm on September 22.
Present were three key figures in the establishment of the 2004 new zoning plan – Australia’s then Minister for Environment David Kemp, Virginia Chadwick, who was the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s (GBRMPA) CEO and chairperson, and the authority’s former Director of Conservation John Day.
With some 3,000 separate reefs and more than 900 islands spread out along 2,300 kilometres, the park covers an area of about 90 per cent of the Baltic Sea’s. It was declared a marine park in 1975, and included on the Unesco World Heritage List in 1981. The first zoning plans, necessitated by pressures from mining, growing tourism and worsening nutrient unbalance – leading to a starfish invasion “of plague proportions”, according to Day – were worked out and decided upon in 1983-88.
Those plans, however, were found inadequate for biodiversity protection after only a decade, and a systematic planning and consultative program, to be known as the Representative Areas Program (RAP) was started in 1998. The process’s main aim was to ensure protection of the different habitat types found within the marine park by increasing the extent of no-take areas through zoning.
After a research and planning phase including collation of datasets, mapping of bioregions and development of operational principles by independent committees, as well as a first community participation phase with over 10,000 public submissions, the first draft zoning plan was made public in June 2003. A new round of public submissions was asked for, resulting in some 21,400 submissions in just three months. After this, further development followed, and a revised zoning plan was completed in November that year. The plan was submitted to Parliament a month later. It was soon accepted and the new zoning plan took effect on July 1, 2004.
New Zoning Network
Its key achievements, according to its sponsors, were a new zoning network providing a framework for conservation and sustainable use for the entire Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and the fact that the new plan protects over one third – more than 115,000 square kilometres – of the marine park within the world’s largest network of highly protected no-take areas, representing all 70 bioregions.
Among the main factors for success, according to Kemp, Chadwick and Day, were effective leadership, access to the best scientific knowledge, high level of public participation and high “socio-political support”.
“It was absolutely essential to involve high political levels, where the authority rests to push legislation effectively and reconcile conflicting political and economic interests”, Kemp concluded, “and public support, on the other hand, was important to manage political pressures.”
All three stressed the value of the public’s perception of the Great Barrier Reef’s “iconic importance” as a good starting point, but Chadwick pointed out that “people also needed to understand there was a problem, before a solution was required”.
“And you have to get out of the office, which goes for the scientists, as well”, she added.
Her then minister David Kemp added, for his part and from his experience, that industry adjustments must be dealt with early in the process, that consulting involving all major stakeholders “must be genuine”, and that clear principles and goals need to be established and maintained in order to manage outside pressures.
When Baltic participants in the seminar asked, curiously, about reactions from trade interests, he concluded:
“We’ve discovered an increased awareness in the fishing industry that they are destroying their own ecosystems. Once they were convinced that they did have a future, but on a reduced level, it was not difficult to get them on the train”.