Writing in her 1951 book, The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson observed: “It is a curiousvsituation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
Seventy-three years later, the situation is more precarious than ever with acidification, water temperatures, and sea levels on the rise. In 2021, the United Nations declared the Decade for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and its recently released “State of the Ocean Report 2024” highlights several bright spots in projections about the sea’s future, along with a great many dismal statistics.
One of the bright spots involves “Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which constitute “about 9.0% of the entire ocean (comprising 2.8% of the high seas and 18.7% of countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones).” According to the authors, about 1,061 out of 1,473 marine species internationally classified as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered “are currently reported within at least one MPA.” In other words, these MPAs provide refuge to about “72% of species facing the threat of extinction.”
While the authors find it remarkable that so many imperiled marine species have been reported in only a sliver of the total ocean area, they go on to emphasize the importance of acknowledging “a caveat in these statistics –– the data do not provide insight into the current presence of these species” in MPAs, “nor their abundance both inside and outside these designated areas. Nevertheless, these findings are promising, suggesting that existing MPA areas serve as a commendable starting point … to safeguard marine biodiversity.”
Another tool that can protect marine biodiversity is called “Marine (or Maritime) spatial planning (MSP), a key area-based policy to sustainably manage human activities within maritime territories of countries on all continents.” According to the authors, “A total of 126 countries/territories were identified as engaged in MSP initiatives,” in 2023, an increase of 20% from the assessment completed in 2022, with the most notable growth in countries in Africa and Oceania. Meanwhile, “The number of countries engaged in MSP in Europe remains high and stable,” due to a European Union Directive on MSP that required all coastal countries to approve marine spatial plans by 2021.
The health of our oceans is paramount because of the wide array of “services” provided by healthy marine and coastal ecosystems. One of these services is carbon sequestration. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “All biologically driven carbon fluxes and storage in marine systems that are amenable to management can be considered as blue carbon.” These blue carbon ecosystems, which include mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses, “sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the biomass and in the sediments below for hundreds to thousands of years, if undisturbed.” But it is estimated that human activities, “such as destructive fishing practices, pollution, coastal infrastructure development and land use change … have resulted in the loss of 20–35%” of these blue carbon systems since 1970.
In order to address these losses, the International Partnership for Blue Carbon (IPBC) has been launched under the leadership of Australia “with the aim to increase global efforts to conserve, restore and sustainably manage coastal blue carbon ecosystems.” Curiously, the U.N. report’s authors also point out that other international frameworks, such as the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “provide opportunities for countries to accelerate the protection of coastal habitats, for example, through the designation of … UNESCO World Heritage Sites in coastal areas encompassing blue carbon ecosystems, which may lay the groundwork for a better protection of these habitats.”
Another service provided by marine and coastal ecosystems is food supply. According to the authors of the U.N. report, aquatic foods provide “essential nutrients for healthy diets” and make “a significant contribution to food security … as the per capita consumption of aquatic foods over the last decade has grown at twice the rate of the population growth.” Despite these benefits, the authors find it “surprising how aquatic foods have been undervalued as a nutritional solution.” But this perception is changing “as the diversity of aquatic foods … and their unique contribution in the form of bioavailable micronutrients and long-chained polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids is increasingly recognized. As a result, their potential to address the ‘triple burden of malnutrition’ (micronutrient deficiencies, undernutrition, and overweight and obesity) is growing.”
The authors call for a “Blue Transformation” to “optimize the role of aquatic foods in sustainably feeding the world’s population under changing environmental, social and climate conditions, achieving a productive ocean capable of supporting sustainable food supply and a sustainable ocean economy.” These efforts remain the only hope of achieving “the ocean we need for the future we want.”
Visit https://www.ioc.unesco.org/en/stor2024 to view the full report.
Trey Gerfers is a San Antonio native and serves as general manager of the Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District. He has lived in Marfa since 2013 and can be reached at tgerfers@pcuwcd.org.
