More than 10% of the world’s ocean is now protected to some degree, marking significant progress in global ocean conservation efforts, according to an Apr. 1. annoucement from the U.N. Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). However, this accomplishment comes six years behind schedule, and experts warn that efforts must pick up speed to meet the more ambitious current goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. Achieving that will require protecting an additional area about the size of the Indian Ocean within the next four years. The crossing of the 10% threshold follows the recent addition of 284 marine or coastal protected areas in Indonesia and Thailand to the World Database on Protected and Conserved Areas (WDPCA), a platform managed by the UNEP-WCMC. This database tracks progress toward Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also known as the “30×30” goal, which aims to protect nearly a third of the ocean, as well as Earth’s land and inland waters, by the end of the decade. Prior to the creation of the 30×30 goal, governments were focused on Aichi Target 11, which called for protecting 10% of land and water by 2020. Reef fish in a Marine Protected Area at Mnemba Island, Zanzibar. Image by Jorge Láscar via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). The tracking system itself has recently changed. Formerly known as the World Database on Protected Areas, the WDPCA was updated in November to mark its merger with the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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