The purpose of this paper is to outline various approaches to area-based management of coastal and marine areas and to measure progress of their implementation in Asia and the Pacific as a proxy for progress on SDG indicator 14.2.1. To measure progress on SDG indicator 14.2.1 in Asia and the Pacific, online literature was used to determine stages of implementation of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) between 2009 and 2019. During this period 29 countries out of 46 coastal member States were found to have made substantial progress in MSP implementation.