Everything You Want to Know About MPAs

Catch up with all the latest news, opinions and developments to do with South Africa’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Earlier this year, in an article in the Daily Maverick (23 June 2024), the Acting Deputy Director-General: Oceans & Coasts at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), Radia Razack commendably emphasised the importance of sustainability. However, she also stated that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are indispensable tools to protect vital marine ecosystems and species, so as to conserve biodiversity and ensure the long-term health of our oceans (Razack, 2024). But how indispensable are MPAs (and especially further MPAs), as proffered by Razack for South Africa? Her article offers promising outcomes, such as conserving biodiversity, ensuring the health of oceans, sustainable use of resources and providing security against the effects of climate change. Yet on inspection, the article is vague as to how MPAs will achieve these. It is telling that DFFE’s lead scientist on MPAs, when asked in a meeting why South Africa needed more MPAs as his Department was advocating, answered that he did not know. This article is written by Professor Emeritus Doug Butterworth, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town.
Read Opinion. On the Assertion that MPAs are Indispensable for the Sustainable Management of SA’s Living Marine Resources

Questions have been raised about the validity of most of the MPAs (and especially further MPAs) to the South African marine environment and about plans to significantly increase protection of the oceans by 2030. Can the outcomes promised, such as conserving biodiversity, ensuring the health of oceans, sustainable use of resources, and providing security against the effects of climate change, really be achieved by MPAs? Some, and the same, questions were put to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), WWF SA, and the Biodiversity Law Centre (BLC).
Read How Valid are MPAs to the South African Marine Environment?

In response to a recent article by internationally acclaimed Professor Emeritus Doug Butterworth of the University of Cape Town Marine Resource Assessment Management Group, critical concern is raised regarding the objective purpose for declaration of Marine Protected Areas to protect the sustainability of South Africa’s marine biodiversity, in particular mobile species that gravitate both in and out of declared MPAs. 
Read MPAs and Confusion in State vs Unathi-Wena Fishing

Veteran fisherman Jack Walsh comments on Prof. Doug Butterworth’s article in which he takes issue, in his opinion clearly correctly, with Acting Director-General for Ocean and Coasts, Radia Razack, at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE).
Read MPAs. In the Right Circumstances of Course They Are Necessary. Indispensable, of Course Not!

Scientific consultant Mike Bergh, working with the South African Pelagic Fishing Industry Association (SAPFIA), comments on Professor Doug Butterworth’s article: “How Indispensable Are Marine Protected Areas for Protecting the South African Marine Environment?” which responds in part to a 20 June 2024 Daily Maverick article by Radia Razack of the DFFE. .
Read Opinion. On the Assertion that MPAs are Indispensable for the Sustainable Management of SA’s Living Marine Resources

Innocent Dwayi of SADSTIA offers his point of view of how indispensable marine protected areas are for protecting South Africa’s marine environment. Read Rigorous Fisheries Management a Better Option than More MPAs

Kevern Cochrane, Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science, Rhodes University, Makhanda refers to an article he published in 2007 – “Marine Protected Areas as Management Measures: Tools or Toys?” – which reviewed the intense push by some agencies and interest groups to increase coverage of MPAs and the counter -arguments to them, largely but not only in relation to fisheries and fisheries management (Cochrane, 2007). As can be seen in the response by Doug Butterworth to the Daily Maverick article by Radia Razack of Oceans and Coasts at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), and the other articles that followed the one by Butterworth, the conflict rages on.
Read MPAs: Tool or Valuable Marketing Toy?

Is it really possible to balance marine conservation with economic development? WWF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in South Africa seem to believe so and they have backed up this thinking with a new report that was handed over to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
Read New Complementary Conservation Measures to MPAs Mooted

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