AUTHOR=Caldeira Mariana , Teixeira Heliana , Hilário Ana 

TITLE=Negotiations to implement area-based management tools beyond national jurisdiction: the scientific community’s view

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1173682

DOI=10.3389/fmars.2023.1173682

ISSN=2296-7745

ABSTRACT=A new international legally-binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction is being developed under UNCLOS – the BBNJ agreement. Area-based management tools (ABMTs), including marine protected areas (MPAs) have an important role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in the current context of multiple threats to the ocean and are one of central elements of new agreement. In this work, we assessed the perspective of the scientific community, throughout the period of negotiations, on the potential of the BBNJ agreement to promote the creation of new area-based management tools, including MPAs, and fulfil acknowledged gaps in ocean governance. A systematic literature review was conducted, resulting in 80 publications then analysed in detail. From these, a total of 608 key messages were retrieved and classified into: 1) one of four elements of a SWOT analysis and 2) one of six categories defined in this work that cover crucial aspects for the successful implementation of the ABMTs in areas beyond national jurisdiction. A Sentiment Analysis to these key messages shows that the agreement has been perceived by the scientific community as an opportunity for conserving and achieving sustainable use of biodiversity. However, the scientific community also feels that agreement does not have solid provisions to ensure effective measures, which is reflected by the small number of identified strengths. An overall decrease in sentiment score over the negotiations period, i.e. a growing pessimism, was also observed, which is supported by an increase of weaknesses and threats identified in the final stages of the negotiations. Our results suggest that despite its potential to promote conservation in areas beyond national jurisdiction, the agreement must find a unified definition of MPA, address fishing activities and clarify conflicting terms in its provisions, such as the term “not undermine”. Further, we show that sentiment analysis is a useful tool to evaluate opinion trends and facilitate the integration of different and subjective perspectives into final provisions of complex social-political-environmental agreements, identifying positive and negative attitudes that can enable better solutions to address existing governance challenges in international waters.