OPINION | The CO2 emissions issue: are we failing the oceans?

We live in a new maritime environment. Once maritime cooperation could be equated with putting down pirates. But Captain John Silver no longer sails the Spanish Main; Henry Morgan long since settled in Jamaica and no one robs the Spanish treasure fleet for Good Queen Bess. But we still face many miles to walk – or rather – swim before we can bring ourselves to craft a common, cooperative approach to the common protection of our oceans, a policy that is just as needed now as it was 300 years ago.

This point has been brought home to many of us by the boarding and ransoming of massive super tankers in the Gulf of Somalia. Given the huge sums involved in the retaking and ransoming of those massive vessels, it may sound strange to read that the ship-going nations of the world – and the fisheries in particular – face a common problem that is of both greater immediacy and higher importance.

We all know the basics of the global narrative. We have committed to conserve no less than 30 per cent of the world’s oceans but so far as we have been willing to test ourselves and have fallen miserably at the first fence.

Consequently, the vast amount of CO2 emissions discharged on or over land will continue to land in our oceans, which, in turn, will acidify at an ever-swifter pace while, in turn, raising ocean temperatures. The men and women who derive their livings from fisheries all seem to agree that, while their local fisheries have not always shrunk, those that have not shrunk have moved in search of cooler climes. How long will nature be willing to spare us this latitude and what happens to our fisheries when the generosity dies out?

On Saturday, August 27, a group of diplomats, government representatives and NGOs walked out of a multilateral discussion at the United Nations in New York City, a discussion that was designed to address this question. Is there a government and an economy out there that sincerely believes it can afford to let these discussions just peter out?

Article reprinted with permission from the IWMC – World Conservation Trust.