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Or Common Ownership |
Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the earth’s
surface. More than 3.5 billion people
depend on them for food, energy and income.
The United Nations is now posting a new environmental
warning: the world is running out of time to prevent the gradual degradation of
the world’s oceans and the widespread destruction of marine life. The United
Nations says delays in implementing solutions to the problems already
identified as threatening to degrade the world’s oceans will lead,
unnecessarily, to incurring greater environmental, social and economic costs.
The first World Ocean Assessment found the sustainable use
of the oceans cannot be achieved unless the management of all sectors of human
activities affecting the oceans is coherent.
Experts examined a wide range of issues that affect the
oceans’ ecosystems and marine biodiversity, including the impacts of climate
change, ice coverage, the frequency of storms, ocean acidification, land-based
activities, unsustainable fishing practices, shipping activities, invasive
non-native species, offshore hydrocarbon industries and marine debris. “And
they found that the world’s oceans are in dire shape,” according to the U.N.
John Tanzer, director of the Global Marine Programme at
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told IPS the U.N. report is “further
substantive proof that the health of our ocean and its economic base are under
serious threat and that we need to take immediate action.”
By protecting the ocean’s natural and cultural resources,
marine protected areas play a central role in addressing some of the global
development challenges of today, such as food and energy security, poverty and
climate change.
Meanwhile, the WWF said the untapped riches in the world’s
oceans are estimated at nearly $24 trillion – the size of the world’s leading
economies. If compared to the world’s top 10 economies, the ocean would rank
seventh with an annual value of goods and services of 2.5 trillion dollars,
according to the study. Describing the oceans as economic powerhouses, the
study warned that the resources in the high seas are rapidly eroding through
over-exploitation, misuse and climate change. “The ocean rivals the wealth of
the world’s richest countries, but it is being allowed to sink to the depths of
a failed economy,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF
International.
Environmentalists rightly show how many of our current
productive methods are not 'sustainable' in that they damage the environment
for future generations. Why is it that with the accumulated wealth of knowledge
and expertise in every field of food production that so much soil is degraded,
the health of oceans and prospects for fishing are under threat, and large
areas have lost the biodiversity which is so essential to the health of the
planet? All over the world the present economic system plunders and wastes the
Earth's non-renewable mineral and energy sources. All over the world it
pollutes the sea, the air, the soil, forests, rivers and lakes. All over the
world it upsets natural balances and defies the laws of ecology. Clearly this
destruction and waste cannot continue indefinitely, but it need not; it should
not and must not. It is quite possible to meet the basic material needs of
every man, woman and child on this planet without destroying the natural
systems on which we depend and of which we are a part. The productive methods
that would have to be adopted to achieve this are well enough known:
1) The practice of types of farming that preserve and
enhance the natural fertility of the soil;
2) The systematic recycling of materials (such as metals and
glass) obtained from non-renewable mineral sources;
3) The prudent use of non-renewable energy sources (such as
coal, oil and gas) while developing alternative sources based on natural
processes that continually renew themselves (such as solar energy, wind power
and hydroelectricity);
4) The employment of industrial processes which avoid the
release of poisonous chemicals or radioactivity into the biosphere;
5) The manufacture of solid goods made to last, not to be thrown
away after use or deliberately to break down after a calculated period of time.
So what stands in the way? Why isn't this done? The simple
answer is that, under the present economic system, production is not geared to
meeting human needs but rather to the accumulation of monetary wealth out of
profits. As a result, not only are basic needs far from satisfied but much of
what is produced is pure waste from this point of view—for example all the
resources involved in commerce and finance, the mere buying and selling of
things and those poured into armaments. The whole system of production, from
the methods employed to the choice of what to produce, is distorted by the
imperative drive to pursue economic growth for its own sake and to give
priority to seeking profits to fuel this growth without consideration for the
longer term factors that ecology teaches are vitally important. The result is
an economic system governed by blind economic laws which oblige
decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or
sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste.
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