If you happen to be in Europe next week, why not stop by Brussels on May 16th and participate in a conversation between folks in the EU and the US working on marine protected areas, aka MPAs. It's not that odd a time to be in Brussels, the weather is warm and there's a meeting of the Council of the Parties for the Convention on Biodiversity that weekend, so it's possible you were already planning to go. I, for one, am excited to be part of the conference as many of the questions about MPAs are the same whichever side of the pond you're on. Who gets to draw the lines? How do you monitor and enforce them? What makes a public process work, and what's a one-way trip to brawling, catastrophic failure?

Oddly enough, California and the EU are on the same timeline. Governor Schwarzenegger announced he wants the state's MLPA process done by 2010-11, and the Convention on Biological Diversity has a 2010 deadline for a European network of MPAs. It would be great if we ended up with real investment zones, protecting special places like nurseries and sensitive habitats. It would be depressing if the EU ended up with only paper parks, where they have protection only in the name and not in the water.