“HOW inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean”. That quote, usually attributed to Arthur C. Clarke, pops up regularly at ocean science conferences, but is no less true for being a cliché. The ocean covers 71 per cent of the planet’s surface and .
Increasingly, it is being exploited by us. As our special report on what has been termed the “blue acceleration” details, over the past 20 years, the ocean economy – fish, ships, hydrocarbons, wind energy, cables, tourism and more – has grown explosively. This trend is forecast to continue and the ocean is already feeling the strain. We are at risk of repeating the mistakes of our unsustainable exploitation of the land.
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It isn’t too late to drop anchor. Most of today’s ocean economy is the definition of unsustainable, yet there are pathways to genuinely green growth driven by renewable energy, sustainable aquaculture and fisheries, and “blue carbon” – the capture of carbon dioxide by kelp, mangroves and plankton.
But we must first stop degrading the ocean. That sounds like a whale of a task, and decisions this year will be crucial. At the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, in February, , laid out six key waypoints, starting with that summit and ending with the COP27 climate conference in November. In between were final discussions over a new treaty for the high seas, negotiations to end harmful fishing subsidies, the agreement of new biodiversity targets and the UN Ocean Conference starting in June in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Nairobi meeting brought agreement to negotiate a treaty to tackle the scourge of oceanic plastic pollution. But the latest round of discussions on the , with more talks planned for later this year.
The problems of the oceans are often overlooked in our focus on our depredations of the land. The global community must wake up to just how critical getting these agreements is for the water-world we stubbornly call Earth.
