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Our oceans - source of life
An end to the infinity illusion
The oceans and seas provide oxygen for breathing and food, they provide work for millions and millions of people and are loved as a place of longing, a spiritual home, a sports or adventure playground. At the same time, the oceans regulate the weather and climate and slow down man-made global warming. The future of humanity is therefore directly linked to the fate of the oceans.
The ocean covers 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface and is more vital for human wellbeing than ever. It provides people and the global economy with goods and services, material and non-material, whose monetary value is often impossible to quantify. According to the ecosystem services concept, they can be assigned to four categories: researchers distinguish between provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services from the sea.
We humans have already significantly altered 66 per cent of marine habitats.
World Ocean Review
Fig.: “Marine wilderness” means areas of water whose habitats and biotic communities are mostly undisturbed by humans. In 2017, the term applied to just 13.2 per cent of the global ocean. Most of these ecologically intact spaces are located in open ocean regions, remote from overexploited coastal areas.
Although the ecosystem services approach has sparked controversy among scientists, it has, over the past 25 years, done much to reveal the major extent to which human wellbeing depends on the ocean, as well as the likely adverse impacts if the condition of the oceans and seas were to deteriorate. The state of the world’s ocean is regularly investigated in international studies by bodies such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). In its recent Global Assessment Report, the IPBES concludes that 66 per cent of marine habitats are experiencing significant human impacts and that the ocean’s functional diversity is therefore decreasing. The world’s largest habitat, once seen as vast and infinite, has long reached its limits.
International policy-makers and the ocean economy therefore face a challenge: to develop new and sustainable strategies for the use of the ocean.
World Ocean Review
From: World Ocean Review No. 7, 2021, Hamburg.
International policy-makers and the ocean economy therefore face a challenge: to develop new and sustainable strategies for the use of the ocean. One possible solution is the blue economy model. The international ocean research community is also committed to more intensive cooperation and, during the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science (2021 to 2030), will help to build a shared information system, based on science-based data from all parts of the world’s ocean.
The aim is to be able to predict the possible impacts of political or economic decisions on the ocean more effectively and discuss them in advance. Campaigners against the reckless exploitation of the ocean, however, are calling for a total renunciation of conventional economic models and a shift towards ecological concepts that would enable the ocean, in future, to fulfil all the demands made of it by human communities.
Published with the kind permission of maribus gGmbH.
mareverlag founded the non-profit organisation maribus in 2008 to raise public awareness of marine science and thus contribute to more effective marine protection. The focus is not on commercial considerations, but solely on raising awareness of marine issues. The World Ocean Review is a unique publication on the state of our oceans, reflecting the current state of science. All WOR issues can be ordered free of charge or downloaded as PDF files: https://worldoceanreview.com/en/
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