Amidst the furore of finalising the CBD’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – now know as the Kunming-Montreal GBF – the results of the most recent Regional Workshop to describe Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (the North-East Atlantic Workshop held in 2019) were accepted by the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) with only limited comment. These additional 17 special areas mean that over the past decade the CBD has leveraged scientific expertise to describe 338 EBSAs in the world’s ocean. These areas should be the focus of management efforts to retain and restore their value for conservation and sustainable use by future generations. The ‘should’ is informed by continuing unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss and the profound challenge of implementing the GBF.
