Abstract
Pledge submissions for the EU Biodiversity Strategy’s goal to protect 30% of marine areas by 2030 are severely delayed. A 19-country survey reveals challenges ranging from ambiguous guidance to technical constraints and insufficient time. These hurdles risk delaying submissions and producing inconsistent pledges, thereby hindering Marine Spatial Planning progress. This paper proposes practical recommendations to unlock timely, high-quality submissions and help the EU deliver its marine conservation commitments.
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Acknowledgements
V.R. is deeply grateful to the Directorate-General for Environment (European Commission), Unit D3—Nature Conservation, for its valuable support in facilitating the collection of survey responses and reviewing Fig. 1. V.R. extends her appreciation to Anne Weißkirchen for her assistance with figure editing and her support for the conceptualisation of Fig. 3. V.R. acknowledges the financial and academic support from the Charlemagne Prize Academy as a Fellow 2023/24. S.V. gratefully acknowledges the financial support from EQUALSEA (Transformative adaptation towards ocean equity) project, under the European Horizon 2020 Program, ERC Consolidator (Grant Agreement # 101002784) funded by the European Research Council.
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Sebastian Villasante is an Editorial Member of npj Ocean Sustainability. Sebastian Villasante was not involved in the journal’s review of, or decisions related to, this manuscript. The authors declare no competing financial or non-financial interests.
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Relano, V., Suryanarayanan, A., Fischer, C. et al. Marine conservation lost in submission: the bottlenecks stalling the European Union’s protected areas pledge delivery.
npj Ocean Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00222-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00222-0
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