The oceans saved us, now we can return the favor

Humanity must heal oceans sickened by climate change, pollution and overfishing to save marine life and save ourselves, experts warned ahead of a major UN conference opening in Lisbon on Monday.

By absorbing — decade after decade — a quarter of the CO2 pollution and more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming, the oceans have kept the Earth’s surface habitable.

Our species has retaliated by dumping mountains of plastic waste into the ocean, draining the deep blue of large fish, and poisoning shorelines with toxic chemicals and agricultural runoff that create dead zones without oxygen.

“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.”

Nearly $35 billion in subsidies that are making overfishing worse are being put in the spotlight in Lisbon, despite first steps towards a partial ban imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) last week.

At the same time, CO2-acidified seawater, combined with massive ocean heat waves lasting months or more, is killing coral reefs that support a quarter of marine life and support a quarter billion people.

“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.

The five-day UN Ocean Conference, co-hosted by Portugal and Kenya and postponed from April 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will bring together thousands of government officials, businesses, scientists and NGOs in search of solutions.

While they don’t all agree on what needs to be done, they largely agree on what’s at stake.

“If we don’t do the right thing, we could end up with a dead ocean,” Rashid Sumaila, a fisheries expert and professor at the University of British Columbia, told AFP.

“Think about it – oh boy, it’s scary.”

Pollution, which, according to current trends, could see as much plastic in the seas as fish by mid-century, is also on the agenda, with proposals ranging from recycling to a total ban on plastic bags.

From East Asian factory ships roaming the high seas to artisanal fishing boats hugging tropical shores, how to make wild fishing sustainable will be high on the Lisbon agenda.

The new buzzword is “Blue Food” – sustainable and fair nutrition from the sea.

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

Also under scrutiny is the booming aquaculture industry, where problems range from the destruction of valuable mangrove forests to the rampant use of antibiotics.

The conference can report for the first time trend lines for wild fisheries – which peaked in the 1990s – and farmed fish, each producing about 100 million tonnes a year.

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 that won’t stop participants from 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, which recently were moved from China to Montréal.

The oceans are already at the center of a draft biodiversity treaty tasked with halting what many scientists believe will be the first “mass extinction” since a meteor wiped out terrestrial dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago.

A coalition of nearly 100 nations supports a cornerstone provision that would designate 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans as protected areas.

Not so much for climate change.

Despite the dire effects of global warming and the key role the oceans play in absorbing atmospheric CO2, the seven seas have received little mention in the ongoing UN climate talks until recently.

But science has made it clear that they need each other: the oceans will continue to suffer unless greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize, and the fight against global warming will be doomed if the oceans lose their ability to absorb CO2 and absorb heat .