Abandoned oceans in the spotlight at major UN gathering

A long-delayed UN conference on how to restore stalled global ocean health begins in Lisbon on Monday, with thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates on the case.

Humanity needs healthy oceans. They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential proteins and nutrients to billions of people every day.

Covering more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, the seven seas have also mitigated the effects of climate change on life on land.

Absorbing about a quarter of CO2 pollution — even with emissions increasing by half over the past 60 years — has acidified seawater, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean’s ability to remove carbon.

And sucking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive ocean heatwaves that are killing valuable coral reefs and expanding dead zones without oxygen.

“We are just beginning to understand the extent to which climate change will have devastating effects on ocean health,” said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank’s global head for the blue economy.

To make matters worse, an endless spate of pollution, including a garbage truck’s worth of plastic, is getting worse by the minute, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Given current trends, annual plastic waste will almost triple to 1 billion tonnes by 2060, according to a recent OECD report.

Microplastics – found in Arctic ice and fish in the ocean’s deepest trenches – are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.

The solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production.

Global fisheries will also be in the spotlight during the five-day UN Oceanic Conference originally scheduled for April 2020 and co-hosted by Portugal and Kenya.

“At least a third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected,” Kathryn Matthews, senior scientist at US NGO Oceana, told AFP.

“In many coastal waters and on the high seas, destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity.”

One of the culprits is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken by the World Trade Organization (WTO) last week to reduce handouts to industry are unlikely to leave a dent, experts said.

The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a booming construction of electric vehicle batteries.

Scientists say poorly understood seafloor ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disturbed.

Another focus will be ‘Blue Food’, the new buzzword for sustainable and socially responsible marine harvesting from all sources.

Rising aquaculture yields — from salmon and tuna to shellfish and seaweed — are on track to overtake declining harvests of wild marine life since the 1990s, each producing about 100 million tonnes a year.

If managed properly, “wild marine fish can provide a climate-friendly source of protein with micronutrients that can feed a billion people a healthy seafood meal every day — forever,” Matthews said.

The Lisbon meeting will be attended by ministers and even some heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, but it is not a formal negotiating session.

But participants will be pushing for a strong ocean agenda at two crucial summits later this year: the COP27 UN climate talks in November, hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15 biodiversity talks, recently relocated from China to Montreal .

The oceans are already the focus of a draft biodiversity treaty tasked with halting what many scientists believe will be the first “mass extinction” in 65 million years.

Nearly 100 nations support a cornerstone provision that would designate 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans as protected areas.

In climate change, the focus is on carbon sequestration: increasing the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2, whether through improvement of natural sinks like mangroves or through geoengineering programs.

At the same time, scientists warn that drastic reductions in greenhouse gases are needed to restore ocean health.