New International Guidance on Marine Protected Areas

The IUCN Global Protected Areas Programme and IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) have published a new and updated edition of Best Practice Guidelines on Applying the IUCN Protected Area Categories to Marine Protected Areas. 

Since the original publication of these Guidelines in 2012, many aspects of marine protected areas have been revised, particularly in the light of measuring progress towards global and national goals. This necessitated an update of the Guidelines to ensure that corrected definitions are used.

These supplementary marine guidelines are aimed at ensuring that the IUCN categories can be effectively applied to all types of Marine Protected Areas as well as to any marine components of adjoining terrestrial protected areas, provided a site meets the IUCN definition of a protected area.