The extent of protected areas in the Arctic’s marine environment (Fig. 6) has almost quadrupled since 1980 (Fig. 7). In 2016, 4.7% of the Arctic marine area (860,000 km2) was protected, which, when considered at a pan-Arctic scale, falls short of the Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 goal of 10% of coastal and marine areas to be protected by 2020 (Fig. 7). The marine protected areas are dominated by several very large areas and some parts of the Arctic marine ecosystem was poorly protected in 2016.
Figure 6: Marine protected areas in the Arctic classified according to their IUCN Management Category, 2016.
All but 8% of the 334 current marine protected areas found within the CAFF Boundary have been assigned an IUCN Management Category. Protected areas falling in Category IV, Habitat/Species Management Areas, cover the largest area overall. Figure 8 shows the percentage of protected areas in each IUCN Management Category in 2016.
Figure 7: Trend in marine protected area coverage within the CAFF boundary, 1900-2016.
Figure 8: Distribution of marine protected areas across each of the six IUCN Management Categories, 2016.