‘Marine Space Oddities’ - overlapping conservation designations – do we need all the different local, national, regional and global categories?

Marine nature conservation management is based on either defined areas or named species and/or habitats, i.e. those attributes termed conservation objectives. This has created many local, national, regional and global spatial designations, each of which needs to be defined and operationalised by criteria. This study analyses the criteria for eight international designations used to select marine areas of conservation importance. For the different designations, 39 individual criteria were reviewed, interpreted and grouped into 13 main criteria attributes. A multivariate cluster analysis then determined the similarity between designations according to the criteria attributes and the similarity in criteria according to the designations. This indicated redundancy and overlap in the selection criteria of the different designations used by marine management authorities, suggesting that streamlining or consolidating similar designations would enhance efficiency and reduce duplication of effort in marine conservation. This shows a notable flaw in the designations that most not only require a minimum of a single criterion irrespective of the total but that many designations are similar with only semantic differences. Finally, the paper suggests, for further testing, practical steps to enhance the integration of existing conservation designations and gives a comprehensive definition of what a complete conservation designation should include. • The criteria for eight nature conservation designations are tabulated • In total there are 39 different criteria from the analysed designations • The criteria from all designations have been grouped into 13 high level criteria • Multivariate cluster analyses determine similarities between designations • The analysis indicates redundancy and hence potential streamlining of designations