Global policies occur at the legal and institution contexts in the national and global levels. These policies are of a far larger scale than the local management policies. If you recall from the Local Management Policies, there are 3 categories: governance, regulatory and economic, This section will be split into the same three categories as well.

Governance

Important governance policies at the global/national level with implications for a better improved management and conservation of coral reefs include international agreements and the creation of international marine parks (An example is Turtle islands by Malaysia and Philippines), national regulations and certification systems  that instill and support coastal management approaches which are often the vital components in supporting effective local management. Some good examples of national legislative support being transposed into effective local actions towards reef systems are in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines. As at 2002, Philippines is carrying out a test run for coastal resource management certification (CRM) systems.

Also there are international and national training programmes for management of MPAs, tracking and evaluating governance or technical techniques. These are essential for spreading of standardized evaluation and management measures for MPAs or CRM programmes and techniques used in MPA coastal monitoring,

National policies also affect access and management rights and education programmes. The latter has to be a ongoing process as all successful coral management programmes have elements of continual, ongoing education programmes.

Regulatory

Global and national regulatory policies are usually in international trades and national laws dealing with regulation of trade, fishing practices and land-use and pollution control agreements. An example of a fairly effective trade agreement is the inclusion of corals in Appendix 3 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), in which it is prohibited to ship corals internationally. However, a better enforcement, possibly the best enforcement, is when national laws play a direct role in both export and import of corals so that enforcement officials are more alert. It is also important to have clear laws and policies so that it can be carried out at the local level. An example of ambiguous national laws is in Philippines, where the law indicates that “all active fishing gears” are not allowed to be use in municipal coastal areas, including coral reefs areas, but fails to set definitions on “active fishing gear”, leaving it to the local governments to define. Such vague ambiguous laws often lead to weak or even absence of enforcement.

Economic

An important international and national economic policy that can provide direct help in coral reefs conservation is through the promotion of sustainable tourism. This form of tourism is a significant, indisputable economic force. If done correctly to support reef conservation, it is very beneficial among coastal resource stakeholders.

However, promotion of national tourism policies must always take into consideration the local MPAs. If the local communities and authorizes of the locally-managed MPAs are unable to control influx of tourists, it can be detrimental to the MPAs. More information on MPAs can be found in this following link Marine Protected Area.

Other international or national economic policy incentives or disincentives may have the following such as pollution taxes-though it may not be effective in developing countries and may be hard to implement. Conservation tax waives is also another potential policy, though the effectiveness may be hard to measure.

Finally, the one topic that everyone knows about: the need to reduce carbon emissions. Policies need to address this problem more tightly and intensively, for in the international scale, there is little progress, or at least insufficient progress needed for conservation and sustainability.