Ocean SOS
February 24, 2012
At a conference on ocean conservation in Singapore on Friday, the president of the World Bank announced a new global alliance to cooperate on improving the health of the world's oceans.
"We need a new SOS," said Robert Zoellick. "Save Our Seas."
The idea behind the Global Partnership for Oceans is to bring together countries, scientific centers, NGOs, international organizations, foundations, and the private sector to pool knowledge and resources toward fixing problems with the oceans.
Zoellick said that the World Bank would contribute an initial $300 million (224 million euro) as part of a wider effort to leverage a total of $1.5 billion over the next five years. The money would go toward long term investment in oceans.
In his speech, Zoellick outlined four main goals for the new organization. These focus on increasing global capacity for harvesting fish as a source of food, and increasing the area covered by marine protection zones.
According to estimates from the World Bank, global fisheries run at a net economic loss of $5 billion per year. The Global Partnership for Oceans would seek to turn this into a net gain of $20-30 billion. Roughly 2 percent of the ocean surface is currently under marine protection, and Zoellick proposed raising this to five.
According to the United Nations' latest 'State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture' report, 85 percent of the world's fish stocks are fully exploited or threatened. Zoellick said the new alliance should rebuild at least half the world's fish stocks identified as depleted.
Additionally, damage to coral reefs is increasing due to rising ocean temperatures and acidity, as well as pollution. The oceans support around 50 percent of all species on earth, and many of those are endangered.
"To make our oceans healthy and productive again, we need greater cooperative and integrated action around the globe, so that our efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts," Zoellick said.
The first meeting of the Global Partnership for Oceans will take place in Washington in April, Zoellick said.
mz/rg (Reuters, AFP)