Beyond enclosures? Highly protected marine areas in English marine conservation law and policy

This paper focuses on a new addition to the English protected seascape: Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). HPMAs hold an important value for meeting pressing conservation targets and for studying the interaction between biodiversity conservation and climate change. By prohibiting extractive, destructive and depositional uses, they are test sites for understanding the resilience of marine ecosystems. However, HPMAs are not neutral tools but are highly political, as they limit sea-users’ access to marine resources. Being strict reserves, they can be contested and perceived as enclosures. The way in which HPMAs are framed in law and policy has important implications for the effectiveness and social acceptability of these sites. This paper, employing the analytical categories of new commons and commoning, explores the way in which English law and policy are framing HPMAs asking whether they are contributing to a perception of HPMAs as enclosures.