Blueprint drafted to protect oceans

[LSDeep]

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Scientists are mapping out a plan for a network of marine parks to save the world's oceans from fish stock depletion and growing pollution.

Achim Steiner, director-general of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), said a conservation plan for the unregulated high seas -- part of a U.N.-backed plan -- would be produced by 2008, for adoption by world governments by 2012.

"We've had a good century of developing terrestrial protected areas, national parks on land," Steiner told Reuters late on Monday at the world's first conference on marine protected areas.

"But in the face of big challenges such as habitat loss, pollution of coastal zones, and species loss, and the high seas collapse of fish stocks, the whole marine realm is becoming rapidly more important," Steiner said by telephone from Geelong, a southern Australian city where 700 scientists from 70 countries gathered for the conference.

An IUCN report released on Tuesday said that up to half of the world's coral reefs might be lost in the next 40 years unless urgent measures were taken to protect them against climate change and other threats.

As much as 20 percent of the Earth's coral reefs have been effectively destroyed, Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of IUCN Marine Program, told the conference on Tuesday.

Another 30 percent would be seriously depleted if no action was taken in the next 20-40 years.

In some cases coral reefs have been 90 percent lost. Warming sea surface temperatures can cause bleaching of some reefs and coral can take years to recover. Bleaching is the whitening of coral colonies due to the loss of symbiotic zooxanthellae -- microscopic plants -- from the tissues of coral polyps.

Sediment run-off from farming is also harming reefs.

Scientists say marine protected areas could help save coral reefs, for example by preventing the overfishing that can decrease coral cover or deplete fish populations important for the coral reef ecosystem.

The attempt to bring the seas under greater control follows increasingly lawless acts, epitomized by Australia's dramatic 21-day chase in 2003 of a Uruguayan-flagged boat which had been poaching the Patagonian toothfish -- prized as a delicacy -- in treacherous Antarctic seas.

While the world's first marine park was established almost 100 years ago, the hundreds that now exist around the globe were mostly set up in the past 15-20 years.

Australia established the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Marine Park in 1975 over an area of 35 million hectares (87 million acres) -- bigger than Italy.

Marine parks also exist in the United States, Europe, Africa and elsewhere, but they could be just the start.

"The situation in oceans around the world is deteriorating, and at an escalating pace," Steiner said.

Of the 17 largest fisheries around the world, 15 are at either maximum exploitation levels or are depleting the level of their fish resource base.

"The offtake is unsustainable," Steiner said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters

[LSDeep]

Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - Nearly half of the world's coral reefs may be lost in the next 40 years unless urgent measures are taken to protect them against the threat of climate change, according to a new report released Tuesday by the World Conservation Union.

The Swiss-based organization called for the establishment of additional marine protected areas to prevent further degradation by making corals more robust and helping them resist bleaching.

"Twenty percent of the earth's coral reefs, arguably the richest of all marine ecosystems, have been effectively destroyed today," said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the agency's marine environment program who helped write the report "Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching."

"Another 30 percent will become seriously depleted if no action is taken within the next 20-40 years, with climate change being a major factor for their loss," he said in a statement.

Coral bleaching is caused by increased surface temperatures in the high seas and higher levels of sunlight caused by climate change. As temperatures rise, the algae on which corals depend for food and color die out, causing the coral to whiten, or "bleach."

Prolonged bleaching conditions over ten weeks can eventually lead to the death of the coral.

"Current predictions are that massive coral bleaching will become a regular event over the next 50 years," Lundin said.

In its report, the organization said that marine parks reduce the stress on coral reef ecosystems by reducing the impact of pollution and overfishing.

The report also recommends a strategy for the establishment of a global marine park network in the face of climate change, covering all important marine ecosystems including coral reefs.

Other key strategies to enable coral reefs to be more resilient to bleaching are sustainable fisheries management and integrated coastal management, the report found.

"Destructive fishing practices such as blast or poison fishing can make coral reef more vulnerable to bleaching," said The Nature Conservancy's Rod Salm in a statement. "It can decrease coral cover or deplete fish populations that are important for the coral reef ecosystem."

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[LSDeep]

BRUSSELS, Belgium, October 25, 2005 (ENS) - The European Commission has proposed a new strategy to ensure that all EU marine waters are environmentally healthy within 15 years. Loss of marine biodiversity due to contamination by dangerous substances, excess nutrients, the impact of commercial fishing, and effects of climate change are the major problems outlined by the Commission that the strategy is supposed to address. Environmental groups called the plan inadequate.

Presented Monday, the Thematic Strategy on the Protection and Conservation of the Marine Environment aims to ensure that all EU marine waters are environmentally healthy by 2021.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said, “Europe’s seas and oceans make a huge contribution to our quality of life and our economic prosperity, but they are deteriorating because of over-exploitation, pollution, climate change and a range of other factors."

"This is an area where there is a strong need for a European overarching and integrated approach," Dimas said. "We want to ensure that European citizens today and in the future are able to benefit from seas and oceans that are safe, clean, healthy and rich in nature."

The evidence of the deterioration of the marine environment continues to accumulate, pointing to potentially irreversible changes – as illustrated by the poor state of certain fish stocks in Europe or the effects of eutrophication on the marine ecology of the Baltic Sea.

The current deterioration of the marine environment and the associated erosion of its ecological capital, jeopardizes the generation of wealth and employment opportunities derived from Europe’s oceans and seas, such as fisheries and tourism, the Commission warned.

The Commission has developed an integrated policy framework to help deal with the pressures and negative impacts on the marine environment. Dimas says the strategy lays down clear operational guidelines on how to achieve good environmental status for all of the EU’s marine areas by 2021.

But the new marine strategy was immediately criticized by Europe's largest environmental groups. BirdLife International, Greenpeace, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Oceana, Seas At Risk, WWF, the Fisheries Secretariat and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), which represents 143 member organizations in 31 countries, called the "desperately inadequate."

The groups say they regret that the strategy contains no binding commitment to protect Europe’s seas, saying "the protection of marine habitats and biodiversity is essential for the future of the marine ecosystems and the fisheries sector."

The environmental groups agree that the marine waters are in bad shape. Chronic overfishing has placed 38 of 43 fish stocks at risk, and hundreds of thousands of tons of oil are discharged every year into European waters, they point out.

The proposal was expected to fill a gap in the EU environmental policy, which is focused on land. "But the Commission’s text falls short," the groups said. "It is now the responsibility of the European Parliament and Council to set legally binding objectives within this Directive, including a clear definition of what constitutes a healthy sea."

The Commission says they strategy will build upon what has been achieved so far at all levels of governance to protect Europe’s seas.

The 25 EU member states share responsibility for the Baltic Sea, the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, each of which has its own distinctive environmental characteristics.

To take account of regional differences, the common objectives and methods set forth in the Commission proposal are to be implemented at the level of marine regions. Member states sharing a marine area will be responsible for working in close cooperation to develop plans designed to ensure good environmental status in their marine waters, Dimas explained.

The member states' plans are to include a detailed assessment of the state of the environment, defining what achieving good environmental status means in the context of each regional sea. They will also contain clear environmental targets and monitoring programs.

No specific management measures will be set down at EU level, but national plans must be checked and approved by the Commission.

Member states share marine areas with countries that are not members of the European Union and an important part of achieving good environmental status will involve close co-operation with these third countries, within the framework of existing regional seas conventions, Dimas said.

Each member state will draw up a program of cost-effective measures aimed at delivering good environmental status of the marine environment. Impact assessments, including detailed cost-benefit analyses of the measures proposed, will be required prior to the introduction of any new measure. The national programs must be approved by the Commission.

The marine strategy is one of seven Thematic Strategies the Commission is required to propose under the EU’s Sixth Environmental Action Programme. The other strategies will cover air pollution, waste prevention and recycling, sustainable use of resources, soils, pesticides and the urban environment.

The air pollution strategy was presented on September 21, 2005 europa.eu.int/comm/environment/water/marine.htm

The other Strategies are due to be presented over the next few months.

The marine strategy is set out in a Communication, accompanied by a proposal for a Directive and the analysis underpinning the development of the strategy is contained in an accompanying Impact Assessment.

The full marine strategy is available at: 158.166.167.18:8080/comm/environment/water/marine.htm