A few years ago, an academic publishing house approached Franklin & Marshall’s Elizabeth De Santo, an associate professor of environmental studies, about a paper she had written on the militarization of marine conservation.

“The United States, United Kingdom and France have a lot of overseas territories, many of which have been turned into conservation areas, but some of them also have military bases,” she says. “I’ve been looking at this in terms of what it means for conservation? Is it the best we can do or is there some geopolitical strategy behind these conservation approaches?”

These are among many questions De Santo explores in the recently published “Securitizing Marine Protected Areas: Geopolitical, Environmental Justice, and Science.” Routledge’s editors initially wanted to narrow its focus, but she persuaded them about a broader subject.

“That’s why the three themes: the geopolitics of marine protected areas, the justice issues they raise, and the science underpinning them. I was able to build on my research of the last 20 years and make a cohesive narrative that brings the three together,” De Santo says. “They liked that idea.”

De Santo discusses those themes and her work with students on topics related to the book:

1) Why is this book important now?

There is a lot of momentum toward ocean conservation right now, after about two decades of focused attention on global targets for protecting areas on land and at sea. This is especially true following the spring 2023 launch of a new treaty to conserve and sustainably manage biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (i.e., in the oceans out past 200 nautical miles from shore, or about two thirds of 70% of the planet!). Ocean conservation has lagged behind terrestrial overall, but, over the past dozen years or so, we’ve seen exponential growth in it, going from less than 2% protection to over 8% between 2012 and 2024. However, the majority of this has happened within national jurisdiction (the third of the oceans located closest to shore). The rest of the ocean, beyond the coasts, is largely “out of sight, out of mind” to most people, and faces myriad threats, including the nascent industry for mining for deep-sea minerals.

This book provides a synthesis of three important issue areas that go beyond traditional conservation considerations, but which are critical for achieving the long-term success of marine protected areas (MPAs).

 

2) Can you briefly describe the important role marine biodiversity protection plays in geopolitics and environmental justice?

As spatial tools, MPAs can provide a geopolitical advantage when they are situated in important regions far from home. Some are truly enormous (on the scale of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of square kilometers). The U.S. has several Marine National Monuments in the Pacific, and the U.K. and France have designated MPAs in many of their overseas territories around the globe, all of which have significantly boosted these countries’ contribution to global marine conservation. I argue that MPAs in overseas territories serve a dual purpose. They allow large-scale conservation in areas that are often less heavily fished or trafficked than coastal territories close to home (thus displacing conservation efforts away from where we really need to do a better job at managing competing uses of the ocean. They also provide spheres of influence in remote places, a geopolitical advantage both politically and with regard to potential resource extraction (whether fishing or mining, sometime in the future).

For environmental justice, MPAs manage human use of the oceans, so it’s important to examine how well people are integrated into decision-making in terms of having access to environmental information and avenues for participation in decision-making in environmental management. This is essential for coastal planning to be successful, and I look at examples in Australia, California, the U.K, and Canada in the book. I also examine the politics of the science underpinning the designation of MPAs, and how well we are addressing scientific uncertainty. This is particularly important the further offshore you go, where we know less about how natural systems will respond to human impacts.

3) How long did your research take, how were students involved and did it influence their post-graduate careers?

I have been working in the field of marine conservation my entire career (since the mid 1990s), and on marine protected areas, in particular, for just over 20 years. I worked for environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) before entering academia full time in 2009, and maintain connections and collaborations with them, which has been helpful also for students looking for internships and jobs in the conservation field. I started working on this book four years ago, building on previous research and adding new insights from, among other things, the aforementioned ocean treaty negotiation process, which I attended and brought a student to.

De Santo with Caitlin McGinnis ’19 at the United Nations conference on the law of the seas in 2019.