For example, for the past 30 years the MAB programme has pioneered the concept of spatial planning for biodiversity conservation through the Biosphere Reserve Programme in almost 100 countries. Of 440 Biosphere Reserves established by 2006, 109 are coastal and/or marine. The Biosphere Reserve Programme is one of the first initiatives to use "core areas", "buffer zones", and "transition zones", designations that are all relevant today to biodiversity conservation and the sustainable development of ocean use.

 

UNESCO's World Heritage Center encourages State Parties to the World Heritage Convention to nominate sites within their national territory for inclusion on the World Heritage List and to establish management plans and set up reporting systems on the state of conservation of their World Heritage sites.  Marine areas that are currently listed include the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), the Galapagos Islands (Equador), the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System (Belize), the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve (Mexico), and Tubbataha Reef Marine Park (Phillipines) - all of which have employed a wide variety of spatial planning approaches.

 

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, through its Integrated Coastal Area Management (ICAM) Programme is pioneering the use of indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of integrated coastal and ocean management, including zoning as a management measure. At the same time, IOC's Coastal-Global Ocean Observing System (C-GOOS) Programme has developed an operational approach for monitoring many of the parameters of coastal areas that would be essential in populating a series of coastal and ocean indicators. Both the ICAM and C-GOOS programmes could contribute to the evaluation of spatial planning for sustainable economic use and biodiversity conservation.