Stanley, R.R.E.Villasante Larramendi, Carlos SebastiánClaudet, J.2026-01-132026-01-132025Stanley, R.R.E., Abad-Uribarren, A., Belackova, A. et al. Five key opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of area-based marine conservation. npj Ocean Sustain 4, 67 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-025-00172-zhttps://hdl.handle.net/10347/45085Effective area-based conservation is central in global efforts to reverse marine biodiversity loss and safeguard ecosystem functioning. Here, we identify five key opportunities to maximize conservation potential as nations progress towards the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2030 area-based management targets. These include enhancing accountability, elevating conservation in spatial planning, implementing adaptive management, coordinating conservation efforts across scales, and reconciling design with expected outcomes. Addressing these collectively will advance global marine conservation and maximize its contributions to biodiversity protection and human society.engThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Climate-change mitigationConservation biologyjournal article10.1038/S44183-025-00172-Z2731-426Xopen access