Status of activities and outcomes in the MEESO project's work package 7 from 1 September 2019 to 28 February 2021.
Summary
Work package 7 addresses the governance of mesopelagic biodiversity, carbon and fisheries, and other human activities that could affect this zone and its ecosystem services.
The insights from this work, as well as the prepared datasets, will form an important basis for future works on mesopelagic governance. Highlights from work package 7 are the creation and analysis of the first comprehensive global policy dataset relevant to the mesopelagic containing > 700 policies including climate, fisheries, marine biodiversity, and conservation policies and insights generated through this analysis with regard to the use of mesopelagic resources in light of their importance for global carbon cycling.
Highlights
- There is no global agreement that specifically regulates the use and management of the midwater zone, but a comprehensive global governance framework at the intersection of mesopelagic resource use and climate management.
- Policies with wide-ranging competencies such as Regional Fisheries Management Organizations lag behind integrating the governance of mesopelagic resource use and climate management.
- Few policies include species found in the mesopelagic zone.
- The ‘mesopelagic’ is not mentioned in any of the assessed policies relevant to the EU or in EU (countries’) implementation documents of the Paris Agreement and the CBD.