title: Emerging conservation challenges and prospects in an era of offshore hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation.
abstract: Globally, extensive marine areas important for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning are undergoing exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas resources. Such operations are expanding to previously inaccessible deep waters and other frontier regions, while conservation-related legislation and planning is often lacking. Conservation challenges arising from offshore hydrocarbon development are wide-ranging. These challenges include threats to ecosystems and marine species from oil spills, negative impacts on native biodiversity from invasive species colonizing drilling infrastructure, and increased political conflicts that can delay conservation actions. With mounting offshore operations, conservationists need to urgently consider some possible opportunities that could be leveraged for conservation. Leveraging options, as part of multi-billion dollar marine hydrocarbon operations, include the use of facilities and costly equipment of the deep and ultra-deep hydrocarbon industry for deep-sea conservation research and monitoring and establishing new conservation research, practice, and monitoring funds and environmental offsetting schemes. The conservation community, including conservation scientists, should become more involved in the earliest planning and exploration phases and remain involved throughout the operations so as to influence decision making and promote continuous monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystems. A prompt response by conservation professionals to offshore oil and gas developments can mitigate impacts of future decisions and actions of the industry and governments. New environmental decision support tools can be used to explicitly incorporate the impacts of hydrocarbon operations on biodiversity into marine spatial and conservation plans and thus allow for optimum trade-offs among multiple objectives, costs, and risks.
authors.affiliation: The Biodiversity Research Group, The School of Biological Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, QLD, Australia. s.kark@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Salit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kark
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel.|The Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Eran
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Brokovich
authors.affiliation: The Biodiversity Research Group, The School of Biological Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, QLD, Australia.|CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, EcoSciences Precinct 41, Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD 4102, GPO Box 2583, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Tessa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mazor
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt Scopus, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel.|School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Noam
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Levin
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D006838:Hydrocarbons; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D000066388:Oil and Gas Industry
chemical_list: D006838:Hydrocarbons
keywords: biodiversidad marina; combustible fósil; conservación marina; deep sea; excavación petrolera en mar abierto; fossil fuels; gas natural; hydrocarbons; mar profundo; marine biodiversity; marine conservation; natural gas; offshore drilling; oil; petróleo