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Upscaling marine and coastal restoration through legal and governance solutions: Lessons from global bright spots

Published Article

Global

Publication date: November 30, 2024

File format: URL

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Upscaling marine and coastal restoration is essential for meeting global biodiversity goals, yet progress is slowed by legal and governance obstacles. This synthesis identifies five key barriers—permitting gaps, tenure challenges, risk and liability concerns, missing restoration targets and fragmented governance—and analyzes global bright‑spot solutions that address each. By comparing approaches across countries and systems, the work outlines pathways to develop fit‑for‑purpose permitting, clarify tenure, reduce liability barriers, establish restoration targets and improve coordination. These insights provide a roadmap for law and governance reform to enable large‑scale marine and coastal restoration aligned with the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Subject Tags

  • Coastal
  • Habitat restoration
  • Policy

Abstract

There is a global imperative to upscale restoration in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Upscaling of marine and coastal restoration is hindered by legal and governance barriers. Identifying both the types of barriers and potential solutions from global “bright spots” is a first step toward implementing legal and governance frameworks to facilitate upscaling of marine and coastal restoration. Here we identify five types of barriers including (a) lack of fit-for-purpose permitting frameworks, (b) tenure issues, (c) concerns regarding risk and liability, (d) a lack of overarching targets for restoration and (e) uncoordinated governance frameworks. For each barrier, we conduct a broad analysis of legal and governance solutions from across the world. Our analysis provides a guide for future research and law and governance reform.

Citation

Bell-James, J., Shumway, N., Villarreal-Rosas, J., Andradi-Brown, D. A., Brown, C. J., Fitzsimons, J. A., Foster, R., Hamman, E., Lovelock, C. E., Saunders, M. I., & Waltham, N. J. (2025). Upscaling marine and coastal restoration through legal and governance solutions: Lessons from global bright spots. Environmental Science and Policy, 163, 103962. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103962

TNC Authors

  • James A. Fitzsimons
    Senior Advisor, Global Protection Strategies
    The Nature Conservancy
    Email: jfitzsimons@tnc.org