The ocean is home to the
majority of species living on our planet. It provides more than 60% of
“ecosystem services” that allow us to live, starting with the production of
most of our oxygen, and climate regulation: in the last half century, the ocean
has absorbed 93% of the excess heat linked to the increase in the greenhouse
effect.
The ocean is a
prerequisite for the possibility of life on Earth. It is endangered, however,
by the overexploitation of resources, pollution and increasing CO2
absorption. Global warming, acidification, dead zones, harmful algal blooms and
ecosystem degradation are phenomena that reflect the impact of human activities
on the ocean.
This year, the discovery
in the Gulf of Oman of a new “dead zone” which is larger than Scotland and
still growing, highlighted the phenomenon that occurs when marine life becomes
asphyxiated in ocean areas with drastically low levels of oxygen. This plight
comes on top of overfishing and pollution, particularly that caused by plastic
waste, which is dumped into the ocean at the rate of one lorry load per minute,
entering our food web. This has major implications for food security. Part of
this waste is concentrated in ocean areas called gyres, caused by circulating
ocean currents.
There are, nonetheless,
solutions to combat such disasters. In places where destruction has ceased,
life has returned. The marine environment can demonstrate resilience if we
allow it to recover from anthropogenic stresses through good management of its
ecosystems.
With the aim of
encouraging international scientific collaboration to address such challenges,
on 5 December 2017, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Decade
of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). The UNESCO
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) has been mandated to
coordinate its preparation and implementation.
In line with the 2030
Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goal on the conservation and sustainable
use of the ocean, this Decade will be a unique opportunity to mobilize all
stakeholders around a common agenda of research and technological innovation to
gain a better understanding of the factors affecting this resource, their
consequences, and to provide the best responses.
This goal requires up to
the mark investment. According to the Global Ocean Science Report published
in 2017, it currently represents only 4.5% of the public funding allocated to
natural sciences at the global level. We cannot sit back and allow this
situation to continue.
No country alone is
capable of measuring changes in the ocean, nor of cleaning and protecting it.
Through international cooperation, technology transfer and knowledge sharing,
we can succeed in developing environmentally friendly policies that promote
sustainable growth based on the ocean.
On this World Oceans Day,
UNESCO invites Member States, the scientific community, civil society and the
private sector to join forces, following the maxim of the Japanese writer
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an
ocean.”