Civil society, business leaders and policymakers are meeting in Brest for the One Ocean Summit from Wednesday, where issues such as sea levels, plastic pollution, economic development and education will take centre stage. Several initiatives are expected to be unveiled during a meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Covering more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, oceans provide not only nourishment but act as regulators in terms of the climate.
The summit, which runs till Saturday, will look at the effects of climate change, conservation, tourism, fishing, pollution and how coastal cities can tackle rising sea levels.
It comes as France settles in to its six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union.
With the support of the United Nations, the event is made up of more than 30 events (workshops, forums, roundtables and other initiatives), bringing together parties interested in the improved governance of the oceans.
Macron will host a small group of heads of State and Government and leaders of multilateral institutions on Friday.
"Facing climate change, the ocean acts as a shield upon which the future of our planet greatly depends," says Françoise Gaill, who's in charge of science with the Ocean and Climate Platform, an organisation hosting one of the forums.
"It is not sufficiently acknowledged that each day, the ocean absorbs a quarter of the CO2 produced by humankind. This is followed by a chemical modification of the sea water which results in the acidification of the ocean.
"Ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent over two and a half centuries and this phenomenon continues to amplify, thus directly threatening marine species."
Plastic disaster
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is one of the international organisations hoping to draw attention to its latest report on the impacts of plastic pollution on the oceans, biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
"The problem of plastic is everywhere, from the recesses of the largest oceans, the north and poles, to the most remote islands," the WWF said on Tuesday, referring to data from more than 2,000 separate scientific studies featured in the report.
The organisation estimates that between 19 and 23 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the planet's waterways each year, mostly in the sea.
Single-use plastics account for 60 percent of ocean pollution, the group says but it estimates that the production of plastic across the world is expected to double by 2040, with ocean plastic pollution expected to triple during the same period.
This despite moves by more countries, such as France, to ban their use.
"Many places are reaching some kind of saturation point for marine ecosystems, where we're approaching levels that pose a significant threat," said Eirik Lindebjerg, Global Plastics Policy Manager at WWF.
Plastic pollution has reached all parts of the marine environment. Our environment is finite and can't absorb continuous emissions of plastic. We need a new global treaty with the measures needed to go to zero plastic pollution #UNEA5 https://t.co/rgEUsgCSTw
— Eirik Lindebjerg (@EirikLindebjerg) February 8, 2022
"This is threatening not only marine life but our overall ecosystem ... what we have shown in this report is that there is a limit to the amount of pollution our ecosystems can absorb," he says.
Those limits have already been reached for microplastics in several parts of the world, according to WWF, particularly in the Mediterranean, the Yellow and East China Seas (between China, Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula) and in the Arctic sea ice.
Trying to clean up the oceans is "extremely difficult and extremely expensive", Lindebjerg said, adding that it was better on all metrics not to pollute in the first place.
Even if plastic pollution is eliminated moving forward, the problem of micro plastics is expected to double by 2050, as existing plastic gradually breaks down, becoming what is known as "nanoplastics", measuring a thousandth of a millimetre.
WWF is hoping an international deal on plastics will be signed at the UN environment meeting, from February 28 to March 2 in Nairobi. There is no global agreement in place to address the problem.
(with Wires)
