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The world’s oceans are already under stress as a result of over-
fishing, pollution and other environmentally-damaging activi-
ties in the coastal zones and now on the high seas.
Climate change is presenting a further and wide-ranging chal-
lenge with new and emerging threats to the sustainability and
productivity of a key economic and environmental resource.
This new, rapid response report attempts to focus the numer-
ous impacts on the marine environment in order to assess how
multiple stresses including climate change might shape the
marine world over the coming years and decades.
It presents worrisome findings and requests governments to re-
spond with ever greater urgency in order to combat global warm-
ing and to conserve and more strategically manage the oceans
and seas and their extraordinary but shrinking resources.
The challenge of the seas and oceans in terms of monitoring
has always been a formidable one with the terrestrial world
more visible and easier to see. This is despite fisheries contrib-
uting to the global food supply and a supporter of livelihoods
and cultures for millennia.
However, there is growing and abundant evidence that the rate
of environmental degradation in the oceans may have pro-
gressed further than anything yet seen on land. This report
highlights the situation in 2007 in the economically important
10 to 15% of the oceans and seas where fish stocks have been
and remain concentrated.
These fishing grounds are increasingly damaged by over-har-
vesting, unsustainable bottom trawling and other fishing prac-
tices, pollution and dead zones, and a striking pattern of inva-
sive species infestations in the same areas.
According to the report, these same areas may lose more than
80% of their tropical and cold water coral reefs due to rising sea
temperatures and increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide
(CO
2
) leading to a decrease in seawater pH (acidification).
Finally, these same areas are also facing rapidly growing pol-
lution from coastal development, potential consequences of
climate change such as possible slowing of ‘flushing’ mecha-
nisms and increasing infestations of invasive species.
We are now observing what may become, in the absence of pol-
icy changes, a collapsing ecosystem with climate the final coup
d’grace. There are many reasons to combat climate change, this
report presents further evidence of the need to act if we are to
maintain ecosystems and services that nourish millions; pro-
vide important tourism income and maintain biodiversity.
Achim Steiner
Executive Director
United Nations Environment Programme
PREFACE