John Whitfield writes:

Some countries have already protected large areas of reef. In the past five years, about a third of the Great Barrier Reef has been made off-limits to fishing. Norway has banned fishing on all its deep-water reefs; the UK government and the European Commission have moved to stop trawling on the Darwin Mounds; and last September, deep-water trawling was banned across a large stretch of the South Pacific. But in poorer countries – the most species-rich reefs lie off the Philippines and Indonesia – a lack of resources hinders the establishment, management and enforcement of marine-protected areas. In the developing world, the best way to stop reserves from becoming ‘paper parks’ – areas that are marked on maps and protected in legislation, but not in practice – is to involve the people that live and work on reefs in their management. Sometimes this has been overlooked in the drive to protect wildlife.

(LRB 3 July 2008)

Abacus | paperback 242 pp. |ISBN: 9780349121475