LISBON: A long-delayed conference on how to restore the faltering health of global oceans kicked off in Lisbon on Monday, with the head of the UN saying the world’s seas are in crisis.

“Today we face what I would call an ocean emergency,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates at the opening plenary, describing how seas have been hammered by climate change and pollution. Humanity depends on healthy oceans.

They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential protein and nutrients to billions of people every day.

Covering 70 percent of Earth’s surface, oceans have also softened the impact of climate change for life on land. But at a terrible cost.

Absorbing around a quarter of CO2 pollution — even as emissions increased by half over the last 60 years — has turned sea water acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon.

And soaking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive marine heatwaves that are killing off precious coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen.

“We have only begun to understand the extent to which climate change is going to wreak havoc on ocean health,” said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank’s global lead for the blue economy.

Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a garbage truck’s worth of plastic every minute, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

On current trends, yearly plastic waste will nearly triple to one billion tonnes by 2060, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Wild fish stocks

Microplastics — now found inside Arctic ice and fish in the ocean’s deepest trenches — are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.

Solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production.

Global fisheries will also be in the spotlight during the five-day UN Ocean Conference, originally slated for April 2020 and jointly hosted by Portugal and Kenya.

“At least one-third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected,” Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist for US-based NGO Oceana, said.

“Destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity in many coastal waters and on the high seas.” One culprit is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken last week by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to reduce handouts to industry will hardly make a dent, experts said.

The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a boom in electric vehicle battery construction.

Scientists say poorly understood seabed ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disrupted.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2022