Increasing focus on nearshore ocean conservation will benefit people and communities and provide more effective protections for wildlife. The Center for American Progress and several of our partners with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition, including Carolina Ocean Alliance, Endangered Species Coalition, Healthy Ocean Coalition, Minorities in Shark Science, and National Congress of Environmental Legislators, released a new report: Nearshore Ocean Progress: State and Local Leadership That Works for People and Ecosystems.
The United States needs a new ocean conservation strategy. In the face of growing threats—including climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification, increasing storm damage, unsustainable fishing, pollution, and others—many marine ecosystems are in decline. This hurts coastal communities who rely on these ecosystems for their livelihoods, culture, recreation, and protection from storms and flooding. While the American federal ocean conservation movement has largely focused on protecting large remote marine areas in order to meet area targets—goals of protecting a specific percentage or acreage, such as the target of conserving 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030—this approach has significant shortcomings. Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population lives in Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories, yet these islands are home to 99 percent of America’s marine protected areas. What this system leaves unprotected are nearshore ecosystems, which often are more vulnerable to exploitation, pollution, and development.
Since nearly 40 percent of Americans live near a coast, this gap is a huge opportunity to invest in conservation solutions that everyday Americans can see and benefit from. Nearshore ecosystems close to population centers often have more complex political contexts and smaller footprints. However, these habitats punch above their weight in terms of ecosystem and societal benefits. Increasing focus on nearshore conservation opportunities at the state and local levels can help more effectively protect vulnerable ecosystems, support the resilience of coastal communities, create jobs and support working waterfronts, and build popular support for ocean conservation.
To encourage more equitable and effective conservation policies, our new report details strategies for nearshore habitat conservation. It highlights case studies demonstrating how state and local policies have effectively protected six key nearshore habitats: kelp forests, coastal wetlands, oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and beaches and dunes. These success stories demonstrate the importance of state- and community-led efforts to protect nearshore habitats and provide a blueprint for the future of ocean progress.
The threats and solutions for each habitat vary, but some common recommendations from this analysis include the need to:
- Address the global threats of climate change, including reducing the usage of fossil fuels.
- Involve local communities and stewards in decision-making and management.
- Create channels for open communication and resource sharing between local, state, and federal governments.
- Provide sustained funding and planning for active management on the long timescales required for effective restoration.
- Establish clear plans for monitoring and research to ensure effectiveness.
- Establish strong laws around managing human development and activities with strong safeguards to prevent habitat destruction.
- Support coexistence of resource use and conservation that creates stewards, supports ocean justice, and increases co-benefits to coastal communities.
- Build resilience by incorporating future threats from sea level rise and climate change into planning.
- Address upstream threats including water quality that can have significant impacts on habitats.
To properly protect these ecosystems, ocean conservation must prioritize nearshore habitats and use more than acreage to measure ecosystem health and benefits for communities. States and local organizations are already spearheading the conservation of these habitats and demonstrating their outsize benefits for coastal communities. To identify effective nearshore policies, CAP synthesized more than 50 survey and interview responses from scientists, elected officials, Indigenous and community leaders, and conservation advocates from 13 coastal states, territories, and Washington, DC. This report showcases examples of successful conservation policies from across the country and provides recommendations about how other states and the federal government can follow suit.