MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, (PNA/Xinhua) — Hundreds of scientists and government representatives are gathering here for the 2nd Global Conference on Land-Ocean Connections, probing consensus on protection of marine environment from land-based activities.
The three-day conference, which started on Wednesday, is organized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) trying to identify approaches to address current and emerging issues in the marine and coastal sector with focus on marine litter, nutrients and wastewater.
The three sources were named as priorities of the Global Program of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA) for 2012-2016 in its Manila Declaration.
Under the Manila Declaration, signatories reaffirmed commitment to developing policies to reduce and control wastewater, marine litter and pollution from fertilizers with a total of 16 provisions focusing on actions between 2012 and 2016 through the implementation of GPA.
“My wish is that the momentum created by this meeting will not only increase the awareness of the GPA program but will also enable us to mobilize political will necessary for its operations and implementation,” said Elizabeth Mrema, deputy director of Division of Environmental Policy Implementation of UNEP.
She underscored the significance of marine environment protection in terms of the realization of sustainable development.
“Coastal ecosystems contribute at least 38 percent of the world’ s total GDP — as much as all terrestrial ecosystems. Open ocean areas alone provide another 25 percent,” Mrema said.
“More than 50 percent of the world’ s population is estimated to live within 100 kilometers of the coast, a figure that could rise to 75 percent by the end of the current decade. Two thirds of the world’ s cities with more than 2.5 million inhabitants are coastal cities,” she added.
However, excessive nutrients, habitat destruction and wastewater coming along with land-based activities account for major damage to marine environment.
Some 20 million tons of phosphorous is mined every year and nearly half of it enters the world’ s oceans — eight times the natural rate of input; alteration and destruction of habitats and ecosystems threatens 70 percent of coral reefs, of which 27 percent are at a high risk of degradation; 90 percent of wastewater in developing countries is estimated to be discharged untreated, much of it reaching the marine environment, according to UNEP.
Mrema called on a global multi-participation partnership bringing governments together with key industrial sectors, major groups, scientists and other stakeholders around a shared agenda to convert the situation.
“It is a common knowledge that the oceans of the world are interlinked and as such, an action on one side of the ocean can have far-reaching repercussions on the other side,” the UNEP senior official said.
“Therefore, the way we see marine litter scattered along many beaches across the globe clearly demonstrates the nature of the impacts we have to deal with under the GPA program for which we need the concerted efforts of all of us if we are to succeed,” she added.
The GPA, adopted by 108 governments and the European Commission in 1995 through the “Washington Declaration” , is a collaborative marine protection agenda under the host of UNEP.