Marine area-based conservation in the context of global change: Advances, challenges, and opportunities, with a focus on the Mediterranean

Currently, multiple natural processes and pervasive direct human activities, including climate change, scale-up to adversely impact marine ecosystems. In this context, marine area-based conservation measures are one of the options available for facing these challenges. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have become a prominent conservation and management tool in the marine environment and are increasingly being applied worldwide, but MPAs alone are inadequate to address the environmental crisis. The promotion of other effective area-based conservation measures under draft Target 3 of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, i.e., conserving 30% of marine areas by 2030, holds promise to acknowledge sites, and practices occurring beyond MPAs that contribute to conservation. Here, we review the evolution and advances in marine area-based conservation, emphasizing the need to ecosystem-based monitoring and the integration of climate change in informing area-based conservation processes, and finally outlining challenges and opportunities in marine area-based conservation, taking the Mediterranean Sea as a showcase.