Global patterns of marine protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) and offshore infrastructure development

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key to conserving ocean biodiversity and regulating extractive uses. However, legal rollbacks to MPAs, known as protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) events, threaten the durability of these protections, especially when authorizing activities incompatible with conservation objectives. While PADDD is well-documented on land, marine PADDD remains underexplored. We present an updated global assessment linking marine PADDD events with industrial infrastructure. To examine these links, we collected new and existing PADDD data from 1975 to 2025 and assessed satellite-based detections of infrastructure from Global Fishing Watch. Detections focused on large, persistent offshore infrastructure located more than 1 km from shore, including oil platforms. A total of 64 oil and gas developments and 12 unknown infrastructure developments intersected 9 unique MPAs across 10 PADDD events in 6 countries. Of these 9 MPAs, 90% had infrastructure detected after establishment, and 44% had detections following the PADDD event. MPAs with PADDD events were twice as likely to have overlapping infrastructure point compared to MPAs without PADDD events (9.5% vs. 5.0%). Such MPAs occurred in China, Venezuela, Jamaica, Peru, Australia, and the United States. Case studies from China, Venezuela, and Australia show how PADDD enables industrial development via legal reclassification and rezoning. These findings indicate that PADDD in marine systems is not the result of isolated decisions, but rather a manifestation of deeper governance phenomena and competing development priorities. Stronger legal safeguards, and improved implementation and enforcement are needed to ensure the durability of MPAs under accelerating industrial pressures.