The vastness and age of the Earth’s oceans make it easy to think of them as indestructible. They have covered most of the planet’s surface for 3.8 billion years. They are so deep, and consequently so unexplored, that scientists estimate we have only “discovered” fewer than 10 per cent of the species living there.
And yet, most – if not all – of these species have discovered something about us. Today, there is almost no part of the ocean that has been left undamaged by human activity. At least a quarter of our carbon emissions end up in the deep sea, where they alter pH and oxygen levels, disturbing delicate ecosystems. At the surface, the most remote patches of the ocean have become repositories for our rubbish. We dump around 14 million tons of plastic into the sea every year; when it doesn’t float as “marine debris”, it often ends up in the stomachs of fish, turtles and other aquatic life. And this is to say nothing of other threats, such as chemical waste and unsustainable fishing practices.
At the UN Ocean Conference, which opened on Monday in Nice, governments will be hoping to turn decades of promises to do better into concrete steps to protect the seas from further harm. French President Emmanuel Macron, who delivered the conference’s keynote, spoke of moving “from words to deeds”.
The rallying point for activists, NGOs and scientists is the so-called 30x30 pledge, which calls for 30 per cent of the world’s oceans to be declared marine protected areas – restricting human activity there – by 2030. The UAE signed onto the 30x30 campaign five years ago, but global progress has moved slowly; at present, a mere 2.7 per cent of the planet’s ocean area is protected.
One of the pathways 30x30 advocates see to success is global ratification of an agreement known as the High Seas Treaty, which would enable, among other things, the establishment of marine protected areas in international waters. Only a third of the world’s ocean area falls within countries’ territorial waters, where responsible governments can enforce strict rules to safeguard the environment. International waters, however, lack much in the way of rules, governance and enforcement – something marine conservationists say has to change if we are to take the plight of our oceans seriously.
The UN conference is set to discuss a range of other issues, such as blue finance, deep sea mining and funding for island states to adapt to climate change. But expanding marine protected areas is the feature item on the agenda for good reason.
Giving the seas – or at least, 30 per cent of them – a break from the excesses of humankind does not just prevent more harm. It is also likely to repair much of the harm already done. While oceans are not indestructible, they do have immense self-healing power when they are allowed to use it and human activity is restricted. As the world-renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough notes in his new film Ocean, released in the Middle East to coincide with World Oceans Day on Sunday: “Wherever we have given the ocean time and space, it has recovered faster and on a greater scale than we dared to imagine possible.”
