Dynamic marine protected areas. To what extent may the future BBNJ treaty facilitate dynamic marine protected areas?

Abstract

The thesis investigates the possibilities of facilitating dynamic marine protected areas (DMPA) in ABNJ. The idea of DMPA is a new way of understanding MPA under international law. However, this thesis outlines that DMPA merges the traditional sense of understanding MPA with addition of key elements to dynamic ocean management (DOM). Consistently, this thesis conseptualises DMPA as an MPA able to shift boundaries in response to spatio-temporal changes in the marine environment through space and time. The focus then shifts to analyse to which extent DMPA can be facilitated for under the current global framework in ABNJ, and expose which gaps and challenges that can be extracted for the advancement of such. Lastly, the thesis investigates whether the BBNJ agreement may alleviate the gaps and challenges outlined in the current global regime pertaining to ABNJ with focus on the draft treaty text and additional reports from the negotiations.