As part of Oxford Green Week, Prof Alex Rogers and Dr Gwilym Rowlands discuss the importance of protecting the high seas, and how marine protection areas can be enforced. The high seas are under severe pressure from both direct and indirect human impacts. These include over-fishing, destructive fishing practices, pervasive plastic debris, deep-sea mining, offshore aquaculture, renewable energy technologies and of course climate change – which can cause warming, ocean acidification and deoxygenation.

What can be done about this? Currently, there is no legal framework for spatial conservation measures in the high seas. So, in this talk, Prof Alex Rogers will present what a network of marine protected areas in the high seas might look like, protecting 30% of known conservation features and taking into account climate change impacts.

We will also hear from Dr Gwilym Rowlands, Oxford Martin Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on Sustainable Oceans, who will consider how such a network of marine protected areas could be enforced and the potential benefits to the ocean. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/