About This Project

Stop asking countries to self-certify enforcement. Use the satellite data that already exists to verify it, and attach money to the result. The mechanism: create a Verified Enforcement Tier (VET) that sits alongside, not instead of, the existing designated-area figure every country reports to Protected Planet and the CBD. The VET is calculated by cross-referencing an MPA's boundary against publicly available vessel-tracking data -- Global Fishing Watch already ingests AIS transponder data and VIIRS nighttime-light boat detection for free, and has published fishing-effort heatmaps for years. If commercial fishing effort is detected inside a no-take zone at a rate above a defined threshold, the MPA is flagged as under-enforced regardless of what its management plan says on paper. This is not a new data-generation project; it is a new disclosure requirement layered onto data that is already being collected by an organization with no incentive to flatter any government's numbers. Layer two is institutional: an independent secretariat, hosted inside an existing body with credibility and no fishing-industry conflict of interest (IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas is a plausible host), runs the cross-reference annually and publishes the VET publicly next to the designated-area number for every reporting country. This closes the gap MPAtlas is currently trying to close with a fraction of the resources a treaty-adjacent body would have. Layer three is the part that actually changes behavior: multilateral and bilateral ocean conservation finance -- GEF grants, Blue Nature Alliance partnerships, debt-for-nature swap terms -- gets contractually tied to VET status for the specific MPA being funded, not to the designation alone. A government that wants continued financing for its marine protection portfolio has to keep its enforced tier up, not just keep the boundary on the map. This flips the incentive from "announce the biggest number at the next COP" to "keep the number defensible against a satellite record anyone can check." None of this requires a new treaty. It requires Protected Planet to add a mandatory field, a satellite-data partner that already does this work to get a modest funding boost, and finance bodies that already attach conditions to grants to attach this one.

Timeline