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Pollution and Management of Oceans and Seas: Challenges in an Unresponsive system
Abstract
The World Ocean System (WOS) is the ensemble of interconnected oceans and seas around
the world. The WOS contains not only the sea surface – which makes up over 70 percent
of Earth’s surface, but also the water column, the sea floor and the sub-sea floor, all of
which together provide the largest overall living space, habitat, on the planet (see, e.g.,
Haedrich, 1996). Indeed, most of Earth’s “ecosystem services” come from marine systems
(Costanza, 2000). Ecosystem services are direct and indirect benefits of environmental systems
to people (Hassan et al., 2005) in four categories: provisioning, regulating, cultural and
supporting services. For example, the World Ocean provides fish for us to eat (see Chapter
40), it regulates the climate (see Chapter 32), provides the basis of the hydrologic cycle that
brings freshwater to us, and provides spiritual, educational, economic and recreational opportunities
for people around the world. Perhaps most importantly, the World Ocean cycles
nutrients and elements, such as carbon, thereby supporting all the other ecosystem services.
Figure 39.1 shows all four ecosystem services, including supporting services and their benefits
to humanity.
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A mess of plastic
It is not clear what strategies will be most effective in mitigating harm from the global problem of plastic pollution. Borrelle et al. and Lau et al. discuss possible solutions and their impacts. Both groups found that substantial reductions in plastic-waste generation can be made in the coming decades with immediate, concerted, and vigorous action, but even in the best case scenario, huge quantities of plastic will still accumulate in the environment.
Science , this issue p. 1515 , p. 1455
Plastic pollution is increasing rapidly throughout the world’s oceans and is considered a major threat to marine wildlife and ecosystems. Although known to cause lethal or sub-lethal effects to vulnerable marine megafauna, population-level impacts of plastic pollution have not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we compiled and evaluated information from peer-reviewed studies that reported deleterious individual-level effects of plastic pollution on air-breathing marine megafauna (i.e. seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles) worldwide, highlighting those that assessed potential population-level effects. Lethal and sub-lethal individual-level effects included drowning, starvation, gastrointestinal tract damage, malnutrition, physical injury, reduced mobility, and physiological stress, resulting in reduced energy acquisition and assimilation, compromised health, reproductive impairment, and mortality. We found 47 studies published between 1969 and 2020 that considered population-level effects of plastic entanglement (n = 26), ingestion (n = 19), or both (n = 2). Of these, 7 inferred population-level effects (n = 6, entanglement; n = 1, ingestion), whereas 19 lacked evidence for effects (n = 12, entanglement; n = 6, ingestion; n = 1, both). However, no study in the past 50 yr reported direct evidence of population-level effects. Despite increased interest in and awareness of the presence of plastic pollution throughout the world’s oceans, the extent and magnitude of demographic impacts on marine megafauna remains largely unassessed and therefore unknown, in contrast to well-documented effects on individuals. Addressing this major assessment gap will allow researchers and managers to compare relative effects of multiple threats—including plastic pollution—on marine megafauna populations, thus providing appropriate context for strategic conservation priority-setting.
The ocean takes up about 93% of the global warming heat entering Earth’s climate system. In addition, the associated thermal expansion contributes substantially to sea-level rise. Hence, quantifying the oceanic heat uptake rate and its statistical significance has been a research focus. Here we use gridded ocean heat content maps to examine regional trends in ocean warming for 0–700 m depth from 1993–2019 and 1968–2019, periods based on sampling distributions. The maps are from four research groups, three based on ocean temperature alone and one combining ocean temperature with satellite altimeter sea-level anomalies. We show that use of longer periods results in larger percentages of ocean area with statistically significant warming trends and less ocean area covered by statistically significant cooling trends. We discuss relations of these patterns to climate phenomena, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and global warming. A large proportion of anthropogenic heat energy is being taken up by ocean warming. Analysis of yearly 0–700 m ocean heat content maps from four different estimates shows that the longer the period over which regional trends are estimated, the larger the area of statistically significant warming.
While the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is projected to slow down under anthropogenic warming, the exact role of the AMOC in future climate change has not been fully quantified. Here, we present a method to stabilize the AMOC intensity in anthropogenic warming experiments by removing fresh water from the subpolar North Atlantic. This method enables us to isolate the AMOC climatic impacts in experiments with a full-physics climate model. Our results show that a weakened AMOC can explain ocean cooling south of Greenland that resembles the North Atlantic warming hole and a reduced Arctic sea ice loss in all seasons with a delay of about 6 years in the emergence of an ice-free Arctic in boreal summer. In the troposphere, a weakened AMOC causes an anomalous cooling band stretching from the lower levels in high latitudes to the upper levels in the tropics and displaces the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude jets poleward.
The long-term ecological impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) are compared to two extensively studied and more recent large spills: Deepwater Horizon (DWH) and the Hebei Spirit oil spill (HSOS). Each of the three spills differed in magnitude and duration of oil released, environmental conditions, ecological communities, response and clean up measures, and ecological recovery. The EVOS began on March 24, 1989 and released 40.8 million liters of Alaska North Slope crude oil into the cold, nearly pristine environment of Prince William Sound, Alaska. EVOS oiled wildlife and rocky intertidal shorelines and exposed early life stages of fish to embryotoxic levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Long-term impacts following EVOS were observed on seabirds, sea otters, killer whales, and subtidal communities. The DWH spill began on April 10, 2010 and released 507 million liters of light Louisiana crude oil from 1600 m on the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico over an 87-day period. The DWH spill exposed a diversity of complex aquatic communities in the deep ocean, offshore pelagic areas, and coastal environments. Large scale persistent ecological effects included impacts to deep ocean corals, failed recruitment of oysters over multiple years, damage to coastal wetlands, and reduced dolphin, sea turtle, and seabird populations. The HSOS began on December 7, 2007 and released approximately 13 million liters of Middle Eastern crude oils into ecologically sensitive areas of the Taean area of western Korea. Environmental conditions and the extensive initial cleanup of HSOS oil stranded on shorelines limited the long-term impacts to changes in composition and abundance of intertidal benthic communities. Comparison of EVOS, DWH, and HSOS show the importance and complexity of the interactions among environment, oil spill dynamics, the affected ecological systems, and response actions.
Previous studies reconstructed twentieth-century global mean sea level (GMSL) from sparse tide-gauge records to understand whether the recent high rates obtained from satellite altimetry are part of a longer-term acceleration. However, these analyses used techniques that can only accurately capture either the trend or the variability in GMSL, but not both. Here we present an improved hybrid sea-level reconstruction during 1900–2015 that combines previous techniques at time scales where they perform best. We find a persistent acceleration in GMSL since the 1960s and demonstrate that this is largely (~76%) associated with sea-level changes in the Indo-Pacific and South Atlantic. We show that the initiation of the acceleration in the 1960s is tightly linked to an intensification and a basin-scale equatorward shift of Southern Hemispheric westerlies, leading to increased ocean heat uptake, and hence greater rates of GMSL rise, through changes in the circulation of the Southern Ocean.
Abstract
Why are some institutions without any policy powers or output? This study documents the efforts by governments to create empty international institutions whose mandates deprive them of any capacity for policy formulation or implementation. Examples include the United Nations Forum on Forests, the Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change, and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. Research is based on participation in twenty-one rounds of negotiations over ten years and interviews with diplomats, policymakers and observers. The article introduces the concept of empty institutions, provides evidence from three empirical cases, theorizes their political functions, and discusses theoretical implications and policy ramifications. Empty institutions are deliberately designed not to deliver and serve two purposes. First, they are political tools for hiding failure at negotiations, by creating a public impression of policy progress. Second, empty institutions are “decoys” that distract public scrutiny and legitimize collective inaction, by filling the institutional space in a given issue area and by neutralizing pressures for genuine policy. Contrary to conventional academic wisdom, institutions can be raised as obstacles that pre-empt governance rather than facilitate it.
In this study, we conducted a literature review of relevant research and then statistically analyzed global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from natural systems, including forest fires, oceans, wetlands, permafrost, mud volcanoes, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Drawing on the Global Carbon Project (GCP) report, we also summarized the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. We then compared the global annual GHG emissions from natural systems with those generated by human activity. The results indicate that the global annual GHG emissions range approximately between 54.33 and 75.50 Gt CO2-eq, of which natural emissions account for 18.13–39.30 Gt CO2-eq, with the most likely value being approximately 29.07 Gt CO2-eq. According to the GCP report, the global anthropogenic emissions have increased from 22 Gt CO2-eq in 1990 to 36.2 Gt CO2-eq in 2016. The amounts of natural and anthropogenic GHGs emissions are roughly of the same order of magnitude. Anthropogenic emissions account for approximately 55.46% of the total global GHGs emissions (2016 value), i.e., the ratio of natural to anthropogenic emissions is approximately 0.8. In addition, the annual amount of GHGs absorbed by Earth systems (ocean and terrestrial ecosystems) ranges between approximately 14.4 Gt CO2-eq and 26.5 Gt CO2-eq, with natural system GHG emissions and sinks also having roughly the same order of magnitude. This finding indicates that the GHG emissions generated by human activity exert extra pressure on what is otherwise a self-balancing Earth system. © 2018 National Climate Center (China Meteorological Administration)
The decline in the floating sea ice cover in the Arctic is one of the most striking manifestations of climate change. In this review, we examine this ongoing loss of Arctic sea ice across all seasons. Our analysis is based on satellite retrievals, atmospheric reanalysis, climate-model simulations and a literature review. We find that relative to the 1981–2010 reference period, recent anomalies in spring and winter sea ice coverage have been more significant than any observed drop in summer sea ice extent (SIE) throughout the satellite period. For example, the SIE in May and November 2016 was almost four standard deviations below the reference SIE in these months. Decadal ice loss during winter months has accelerated from −2.4 %/decade from 1979 to 1999 to −3.4%/decade from 2000 onwards. We also examine regional ice loss and find that for any given region, the seasonal ice loss is larger the closer that region is to the seasonal outer edge of the ice cover. Finally, across all months, we identify a robust linear relationship between pan-Arctic SIE and total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. The annual cycle of Arctic sea ice loss per ton of CO₂ emissions ranges from slightly above 1 m² throughout winter to more than 3 m² throughout summer. Based on a linear extrapolation of these trends, we find the Arctic Ocean will become sea-ice free throughout August and September for an additional 800 ± 300 Gt of CO₂ emissions, while it becomes ice free from July to October for an additional 1400 ± 300 Gt of CO₂ emissions.
Marine litter, and plastics in particular, is fast rising to the top of the political agenda at all levels of governance. The popular phrase today, evoked at all political meetings, in all speeches and at all cocktail parties, is that by 2050, there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean. This is a simple and valid prediction naturally, since global fish stocks are fished at capacity and therefore not increasing in number—whereas the inflow of plastics into the ocean is continuous and rising. Stopping litter from entering the marine ecosystem is therefore the logical step to stop the prediction from coming true. Do we have time to wait for the international community to come together to ratify a treaty text on this, with the required years of negotiations in between, though? Granted, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) passed 13 nonbinding resolutions in December of 2017 of which one was on marine microplastics. They are still nonbinding though and without any teeth or financial instruments attached. The General Assembly, however, adopted resolution 72/249 also in December 2017, on a conference spanning a 2-year period, starting in 2018, where the end goal is to agree on a treaty on the protection of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). We argue in this article that, rather than waiting for a treaty that is plastics specific, a path to fast action could be to incorporate this into these negotiations, since plastic is interweaved as a substantial stressor to the system and to biodiversity in all areas of the ocean.
For three decades, neoliberalism dominated the global political economy. Defined as an explicit preference for private over public control, neoliberalism represented a dramatic break from postwar policies. This article examines the historical development of neoliberalism through three perspectives: as an economic policy, as an expression of political power, and as an ideational hegemony. We reject the notion of neoliberal inevitability and suggest how it came to dominate all other possible alternatives. The review emphasizes the critical importance of political preferences and influences as well as the central role ideas played in defining policy paradigms.
Nitrogen (N) is central to living systems, and its addition to agricultural cropping systems is an essential facet of modern crop management and one of the major reasons that crop production has kept pace with human population growth. The benefits of N added to cropping systems come, however, at well-documented environmental costs: Increased coastal hypoxia, atmospheric nitrous oxide (NO), reactive N gases in the troposphere, and N deposition onto forests and other natural areas are some of the consequences of our inability to keep fertilizer N from leaving cropped ecosystems via unmanaged pathways. The N cycle is complex, and solutions require a thorough understanding of both the biogeochemical pathways of N in agricultural systems and the consequences of different management practices. Despite the complexity of this challenge, however, a number of technologies are available today to reduce N loss. These include adding rotational complexity to cropping systems to improve N capture by crops, providing farmers with decision support tools for better predicting crop fertilizer N requirements, improving methods for optimizing fertilizer timing and placement, and developing watershed-level strategies to recapture N lost from fields. Solutions to the problem of agricultural N loss will require a portfolio approach in which different technologies are used in different combinations to address site-specific challenges. Solutions will also require incentives that promote their adoption.
This article describes the field of the detection and attribution of climate change and highlights recent progress, major issues, and future directions. The attribution of global temperature variations over the past century to a combination of anthropogenic and natural influences is now well established, with the anthropogenic factors dominating. Other aspects of the climate system, including regional quantities, are increasingly being found to also show a detectable signal of human influence. Of particular interest, though, is the attribution of changes in nonmeteorological quantities, such as hydrological and ecological measures, and of changes in the risk of extreme weather events to anthropogenic emissions. Methods are being developed for tackling these two problems but are still in the early stages. As the field gradually includes a service focus, the biggest challenges will become the integration of various approaches into an overall framework and the communication of the capabilities and limitations of that framework to the outside community.
ABSTRACTS
The current crisis in the world's fisheries indicates the need for a different management method than that now used by Western scientists, which regulates the quantity of fish taken. The authors propose a method called parametric management, which takes into account the complex, chaotic nature offish stocks and emphasizes preserving regular biological processes in the life cycle of fish by controlling how people fish. Supporting data come from 28 folk societies, the Maine lobster industry, and the authors' mathematical model of fish stocks.
Sea level rise could bring about an event that has not previously been seen in modern history, that of the physical disappearance of some low-lying Island States. The objective of this paper is to examine what are the likely scenarios for some of these islands in the course of the next century, and analyse for each scenario if these Island States could continue to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone or not. Also, it will analyse the possibility that Island States could continue having some sort of status analogous to statehood even if it was to lose all territory. Finally, the idea of a “government-in-exile” will be discussed, where the State could retain its identity waiting for a future re-emergence of the island.
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), primarily from human fossil fuel combustion, reduces ocean pH and causes wholesale shifts in seawater carbonate chemistry. The process of ocean acidification is well documented in field data, and the rate will accelerate over this century unless future CO2 emissions are curbed dramatically. Acidification alters seawater chemical speciation and biogeochemical cycles of many elements and compounds. One well-known effect is the lowering of calcium carbonate saturation states, which impacts shell-forming marine organisms from plankton to benthic molluscs, echinoderms, and corals. Many calcifying species exhibit reduced calcification and growth rates in laboratory experiments under high-CO2 conditions. Ocean acidification also causes an increase in carbon fixation rates in some photosynthetic organisms (both calcifying and noncalcifying). The potential for marine organisms to adapt to increasing CO2 and broader implications for ocean ecosystems are not well known; both are high priorities for future research. Although ocean pH has varied in the geological past, paleo-events may be only imperfect analogs to current conditions.
An overview is provided of the observed and potential future responses of zooplankton communities to global warming. I begin by describing the importance of zooplankton in ocean ecosystems and the attributes that make them sensitive beacons of climate change. Global warming may have even greater repercussions for marine ecosystems than for terrestrial ecosystems, because temperature influences water column stability, nutrient enrichment, and the degree of new production, and thus the abundance, size composition, diversity, and trophic efficiency of zooplankton. Pertinent descriptions of physical changes in the ocean in response to climate change are given as a prelude to a detailed discussion of observed impacts of global warming on zooplankton. These manifest as changes in the distribution of individual species and assemblages, in the timing of important life-cycle events, and in abundance and community structure. The most illustrative case studies, where climate has had an obvious, tangible impact on zooplankton and substantial ecosystem consequences, are presented. Changes in the distribution and phenology of zooplankton are faster and greater than those observed for terrestrial groups. Relevant projected changes in ocean conditions are then presented, followed by an exploration of potential future changes in zooplankton communities from the perspective of different modelling approaches. Researchers have used a range of modelling approaches on individual species and functional groups forced by output from climate models under future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. I conclude by suggesting some potential future directions in climate change research for zooplankton, viz. the use of richer zooplankton functional groups in ecosystem models; greater research effort in tropical systems; investigating climate change in conjunction with other human impacts; and a global zooplankton observing system.
Author Posting. © Annual Reviews, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 36 (2008): 601-647, doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140139. Recent estimates by Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (2007) are that global sea level will rise from 0.18 to 0.59 m by the end of this century. Rising sea level not only inundates low-lying coastal regions, but it also contributes to the redistribution of sediment along sandy coasts. Over the long-term, sea-level rise (SLR) causes barrier islands to migrate landward while conserving mass through offshore and onshore sediment transport. Under these conditions, coastal systems adjust to SLR dynamically while maintaining a characteristic geometry that is unique to a particular coast. Coastal marshes are susceptible to accelerated SLR because their vertical accretion rates are limited and they may drown. As marshes convert to open water, tidal exchange through inlets increases, which leads to sand sequestration on tidal deltas and erosion of adjacent barrier shorelines.
Ecosystems can alternate suddenly between contrasting persistent states due to internal processes or external drivers. It is important to understand the mechanisms by which these shifts occur, especially in exploited ecosystems. There have been several abrupt marine ecosystem shifts attributed either to fishing, recent climate change or a combination of these two drivers. We show that temperature has been an important driver of the trophodynamics of the North Sea, a heavily fished marine ecosystem, for nearly 50 years and that a recent pronounced change in temperature established a new ecosystem dynamic regime through a series of internal mechanisms. Using an end-to-end ecosystem approach that included primary producers, primary, secondary and tertiary consumers, and detritivores, we found that temperature modified the relationships among species through nonlinearities in the ecosystem involving ecological thresholds and trophic amplifications. Trophic amplification provides an alternative mechanism to positive feedback to drive an ecosystem towards a new dynamic regime, which in this case favours jellyfish in the plankton and decapods and detritivores in the benthos. Although overfishing is often held responsible for marine ecosystem degeneration, temperature can clearly bring about similar effects. Our results are relevant to ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM), seen as the way forward to manage exploited marine ecosystems.
Global forest politics reveal surprising impacts of environmental norms on state behavior at the international level. Negotiations regarding deforestation have repeatedly failed to produce a policy agreement. Instead of abandoning the deadlocked talks, governments created the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), a hollow entity deliberately deprived of decision-making powers. Various theoretical perspectives fail to explain why states create blank international institutions without policy mandates. Several arguments are advanced here. First, a global norm of environmental multilateralism (NEM) helps explain the creation of the UNFF as well as universal state participation in it. Second, such "good" norms can have negative consequences in world politics. NEM prohibits states from disengaging from failed political initiatives, and fosters the creation of hollow institutions that nourish skepticism about the effectiveness of global governance. Finally, global forestry defies the widespread academic notion that norms, institutions and governance are coterminous. Sometimes states design "decoy" institutions whose function is to preempt governance. Copyright (c) 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The great mass extinctions of the fossil record were a major creative force that provided entirely new kinds of opportunities for the subsequent explosive evolution and diversification of surviving clades. Today, the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences. Synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, introduced species, warming, acidification, toxins, and massive runoff of nutrients are transforming once complex ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests into monotonous level bottoms, transforming clear and productive coastal seas into anoxic dead zones, and transforming complex food webs topped by big animals into simplified, microbially dominated ecosystems with boom and bust cycles of toxic dinoflagellate blooms, jellyfish, and disease. Rates of change are increasingly fast and nonlinear with sudden phase shifts to novel alternative community states. We can only guess at the kinds of organisms that will benefit from this mayhem that is radically altering the selective seascape far beyond the consequences of fishing or warming alone. The prospects are especially bleak for animals and plants compared with metabolically flexible microbes and algae. Halting and ultimately reversing these trends will require rapid and fundamental changes in fisheries, agricultural practice, and the emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale.
This paper reviews the available data and models on energy and material flows through the world's 25 largest cities. Throughput is categorized as stored, transformed, or passive for the major flow modes. The aggregate, fuel, food, water, and air cycles are all examined. Emphasis is placed on atmospheric pathways because the data are abundant. Relevant models of urban energy and material flows, demography, and atmospheric chemistry are discussed. Earth system--level loops from cities to neighboring ecosystems are identified. Megacities are somewhat independent of their immediate environment for food, fuel, and aggregate inputs, but all are constrained by their regional environment for supplying water and absorbing wastes. We elaborate on analogies with biological metabolism and ecosystem succession as useful conceptual frameworks for addressing urban ecological problems. We conclude that whereas data are numerous for some individual cities, cross-cutting compilations are lacking in biog...
Agricultural, urban and industrial activities have dramatically increased aquatic nitrogen and phosphorus pollution (eutrophication), threatening water quality and biotic integrity from headwater streams to coastal areas world‐wide. Eutrophication creates multiple problems, including hypoxic “dead zones” that reduce fish and shellfish production; harmful algal blooms that create taste and odor problems and threaten the safety of drinking water and aquatic food supplies; stimulation of greenhouse gas releases; and degradation of cultural and social values of these waters. Conservative estimates of annual costs of eutrophication have indicated $1 billion losses for European coastal waters and $2.4 billion for lakes and streams in the United States. Scientists have debated whether phosphorus, nitrogen, or both need to be reduced to control eutrophication along the freshwater to marine continuum, but many management agencies worldwide are increasingly opting for dual control. The unidirectional flow of water and nutrients through streams, rivers, lakes, estuaries and ultimately coastal oceans adds additional complexity, as each of these ecosystems may be limited by different factors. Consequently, the reduction of just one nutrient upstream to control eutrophication can allow the export of other nutrients downstream where they may stimulate algal production. The technology exists for controlling eutrophication, but many challenges remain for understanding and managing this global environmental problem.
This article is categorized under:
Science of Water > Water Quality
Water and Life > Stresses and Pressures on Ecosystems
The oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is changing seawater chemistry in a process known as ocean acidification. The chemistry of this rapid change in surface waters is well understood and readily detectable in oceanic observations, yet there is uncertainty about the effects of ocean acidification on society since it is difficult to scale-up from laboratory and mesocosm tests. Here, we provide a synthesis of the likely effects of ocean acidification on ecosystem properties, functions and services based on observations along natural gradients in pCO 2. Studies at CO 2 seeps worldwide show that biogenic habitats are particularly sensitive to ocean acidification and that their degradation results in less coastal protection and less habitat provisioning for fisheries. The risks to marine goods and services amplify with increasing acidification causing shifts to macroalgal dominance, habitat degradation and a loss of biodiversity at seep sites in the tropics, the sub-tropics and on temperate coasts. Based on this empirical evidence, we expect ocean acidification to have serious consequences for the millions of people who are dependent on coastal protection, fisheries and aquaculture. If humanity is able to make cuts in fossil fuel emissions, this will reduce costs to society and avoid the changes in coastal ecosystems seen in areas with projected pCO 2 levels. A binding international agreement for the oceans should build on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to 'minimise and address the impacts of ocean acidification'.
This book places contemporary problems of ocean use management in historical context beginning with the time of Hugo Grotius, whose seminal 1609 work The Freedom of the Seas was the basis of ocean law for the next three centuries.
For the past two decades, scholars of international political economy and the environment (IPEE) have become quite focused on the study of various international cooperative initiatives that seek to link economic and environmental issues in the wake of the 1987 Brundtland Report and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. This important work has enhanced our understanding of topics such as the economic dimensions of international environmental governance, the environmental activities of international economic institutions and regimes, and new kinds of private international regimes governing the environment—economy interface. This focus of IPEE scholarship has, however, steered attention away from larger structural trends in the international political economy, whose environmental implications are not addressed explicitly by significant international governance arrangements. Three such trends that are deserving of more attention from IPEE scholars include: the globalization of financial markets; the rise of newly powerful states such as China and India in the global economy; and the recent emergence of high and volatile commodity prices. Each of these structural trends—as well as their interrelationships—have important environmental consequences whose closer study enhances our understanding of the relationship between the international political economy and the environment. Their study also encourages scholars to widen their focus beyond treaties, institutions and regimes to examine broader global economic structures and processes, and the power relationships within them, in an interdisciplinary manner that can draw inspiration from the pioneers of the field of international political economy from the 1970s.
Sixteen years after the publication of Grotius’s Mare Liberum (1609), Serafim de Freitas, a Portuguese friar, published a reply to Grotius’s attack upon the foundations of the Iberian overseas empire. Freitas’s vindication of the Portuguese dominion over the high seas has, however, been consigned to obscurity, as the Anglophone literature concentrated on John Selden’s Mare Clausum (1636). This neglect is unjustified. Not only is Freitas’s treatise an earlier and more systematic response to Grotius, but it also anticipates many of the arguments later deployed by Selden. The purpose of this article is thus to rescue Freitas’s arguments from oblivion.
Deep-water habitats form by far the largest ecosystems on the planet. Enough is known about the lives of deep-water fishes, despite the difficulties inherent in such study, to give a fairly coherent picture of their overall ecology. Inferences based on individual morphology and taxonomic diversity provided the first clues, but series from the various large national deep-water expeditions have allowed the working out of detailed life histories, food webs, species associations and biogeography. The particular conditions that characterize deep water everywhere have shaped the nature of deep-water fishes, and probably the most important factor at play has been the logarithmic decline of food energy available with increasing depth. Comparative study of deep-pelagic, deep-demersal, and deep-lake fishes reveals interesting and intriguing differences with respect to the adaptations and probable history of the faunas in each of these habitats. Deep-water fishes have long been insulated from any significant human impacts, but deep-water fisheries, species introductions, pollution and other ecosystem tamperings are changing this situation rapidly. Can these remarkable, enduring and well-adapted species and assemblages withstand the developing onslaught?
The oceans have long been recognized as one of humanity’s most important natural resources. Their vastness has made them appear to be limitless sources of food, transportation, recreation, and awe. The difficulty of fencing and policing them has left them largely as open access resources to be exploited by anyone with the means. However, in recent times we have begun to reach the limits of the oceans and must now begin to utilize and govern them in a more sustainable way. This paper summarizes emerging information on the interrelated ecological, economic, and social importance of the oceans, and on developing institutions for their sustainable governance. In addition to their traditional importance as sources of primary and secondary production, and biodiversiy, the importance of the oceans in global material and energy cycles is now beginning to be better appreciated. Integrated models of the global ocean–atmosphere–terrestrial biosphere system reveal the critical role of the oceans in atmospheric gas and climate regulation, and for water, nutrient, and waste cycling. Recent estimates of the economic value of the marketed and non-marketed ecosystem services of the oceans indicate a huge contribution to human welfare from the functions mentioned above plus raw materials, recreational, and cultural services. The oceans have been estimated to contribute a total of ∼21 trillion US$/year to human welfare (compared with a global GNP of ∼25 trillion US$), with ∼60% of this from coastal and shelf systems and the other 40% from the open ocean, and with the oceans contributing ∼60% of the total economic value of the biosphere (Costanza et al., 1997. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387, 253-260). The social importance of the oceans for global transportation and as a unifying element in the cultures of many coastal countries cannot be overestimated. However, the cultural traditions of open access must be replaced with more appropriate property rights regimes and governance structures. Some alternative sustainable governance ideas are briefly discussed, emphasizing the need for an expanded deliberative process to develop a shared vision of a sustainable use of oceans.
Four hundred years ago, Hugo Grotius defined the notion of Mare Liberum, leading to the concept of the 'Freedom of the Seas'. This concept has dominated humanity's relationship with the oceans and its renewable resources ever since. We present the conceptual reasons for society having arrived at the current ecological, economic and policy dilemma of widespread overfishing by global marine fisheries. We propose a call for global action to change our attitudes and behaviour towards the oceans away from 'free and open' towards 'heritage'. We then propose one mechanism (ocean zoning) that we consider crucial to address what is clearly a supra-national problem of global dimensions.
Our Human Planet summarizes the findings of the four working groups and serves as a reference guide to the four main volumes in the MA series. It presents the key findings of each of the working groups, and meets the needs of policy makers and other professionals. The summary also provides an overview of the framework used by the assessment, and will serve as a guide for assessment, planning, and management for the future.
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