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5

From fisheries to coral reefs, the marine world generates income,

provides livelihoods and is a vital source of protein for coastal com-

munities across the world’s Continents. Yet a rising tide of pollu-

tion, 80 per cent of which originates from the land, is threatening

this wealth by contaminating ecosystems with chemicals, sewage,

sediments, pesticides, heavy metals and a range of other impacts.

Physical destruction of the coastline is also a growing concern as

increasing numbers of people move to the eight per cent of land that

is the interface between terra firma and the marine environment.

The principle international response to these issues is the United

Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Global Programme of

Action (GPA) for the Protection of the Marine Environment from

Land-Based Sources. The GPA is catalyzing action among govern-

ments and, since established in 1995, can point to some important

successes not least in the area of cutting oil discharges from the

land to the sea alongside assisting in the raising of funds and pro-

moting anti-pollution laws and legislation in countries of both the

developed and developing world. But it is clear that governments

need to do much more if the promise of healthy and productive

and sustainably harvested seas and oceans is to be realized for this

and future generations.

This is given even greater urgency by the climate change that is al-

ready underway. We need a twin track approach to climate change

that eventually involves cutting the emissions of greenhouse gases

by up to 80 per cent in order to stabilize the atmosphere. However,

we also need adaptation in order to assist countries especially devel-

oping nations, to cope with some level of climate change already ‘fac-

tored into’ the system before the big and necessary cuts are realized.

It is clear from this rapid response report that part of the adap-

tation package must include reductions in the levels of pollution

from land-based sources. The team has looked at the recovery

of reefs following the massive, climate-linked, bleaching events

of the late 1990s and made an important link between rates of

recovery and the levels of pollution to which reefs are being ex-

posed. One is left with the inescapable conclusion that the ability

of habitats and ecosystems to survive and to recover from extreme

temperature events and other likely climatic impacts is going to be

related to how well and how sustainably we manage these natural

or “nature-based” resources now and over the years to come. These

will be important considerations for not only marine based natural

resources like coral reefs and mangroves but also terrestrial ones

from forests and river systems to wetlands and heathlands.

In doing so we can hopefully help sustain healthy and productive

ecosystem services so that they continue to provide food up to pu-

rification services – in short a habitable planet – well into what is

likely to become a climatically less stable future.

Achim Steiner

,

United Nations Under Secretary General

Executive Director United Nations Environment Programme

PREFACE

Billions of people rely directly or indirectly on the bounty of the world’s oceans and coastal waters.