In this section:
This unique assessment of the world’s coasts and oceans details the ecological, environmental and economic importance of each and the global challenges we face to manage common waters and the resources they contain before development threatens to destroy the ultimate source of all life on the ‘blue planet’.
With global and regional maps, from the Arabian Gulf to the Great Barrier Reef and including the Baltic, the Black Sea, the North Atlantic the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the South Pacific and all the other major global waterways, the atlas considers the impact of climate change, industrial growth, pollution and over-fishing as well as the steps being taken towards conservation.
is the author of many books on the environment and development, including Coastal Waters of the World, Our Common Future and the Atlas of the Environment. Now Senior Development Manager at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in London, he has worked with UN agencies, governments and NGOs in some 60 developing countries.
Healthy oceans are essential to a healthy terrestrial environment. They also make up the engine that drives the world's climate, storing huge quantities of solar energy in the process. The ocean absorbs and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, creating an important sink that helps to modify human impacts on global climate.
Just over half the world's population – around 3.2 billion people – occupy a coastal strip 200 kilometres wide (120 miles), representing only 10 percent of the earth’s land surface. With this population distribution, increasing human numbers and mounting development pressures are taking a grim toll on coastal and near-shore resources. Over half of the world's coastlines have suffered from severe development pressures. The world has lost half its coastal wetlands, including mangrove swamps and salt marshes. Over the past century mangrove forests have been decimated – 25 million hectares are estimated to have been destroyed or grossly degraded. Coral reefs, the rainforests of the sea, are being destroyed in the name of development, with two-thirds of them threatened by a variety of human-induced impacts. Human activities are also eroding close to 70 percent of the world’s beaches at greater than natural rates. Coastlines in developing countries are suffering from serious erosion problems due to unplanned coastal construction, dredging, mining for sand, harvesting of coral reefs for building material and other activities. Fisheries fare no better with 52 percent of the world’s commercial fish stocks fully- exploited, 19 percent over-exploited, and 8 percent ‘significantly depleted’. Only some 20 percent are relatively under-exploited or stable.
Ocean currents transport pollutants into the remotest corners of the world's seas. Toxic chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, have turned up in the fatty tissues and blubber of seals in the Arctic and penguins in the Antarctic, thousands of miles from population centres. Beluga whales found in the mouth of Canada's St Lawrence River have such high levels of PCBs in their blubber that under Canadian law they qualify as ‘toxic waste dumps’.
There are compelling economic reasons to manage coastal and ocean waters better. Ocean ecosystems provide goods and services worth at least $21 trillion a year, over half of this from coastal ecosystems. The annual haul of seafood alone is valued at $91.2 billion, providing direct employment to at least 43.5 million people, the majority of them in Asia. In addition, as many as half a billion people draw their livelihoods indirectly from the sea: processors, packers, shippers, and distributors of seafood; shipbuilders and outfitters; and those working in marine-based tourism and the recreational fishing industry, among others.
The ecological value of oceans is immense. Coral reefs have been valued at $47,000 per square foot just for their shore protection functions alone. One study put the potential economic value of the world’s coral reefs at close to $30 billion a year; including their value for fisheries, coastal protection, tourism and recreation and biodiversity.
