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As I write, the first-ever UN Ocean Conference is opening its doors. This is a hugely important moment in the history of Planet Earth — or maybe, for this week, we can say Planet Water.
Why do I say “hugely important”? I was hoping you’d ask.
Take a dive into SDG14 …
Everyone knows that the sea covers 70% of the Earth’s surface. But I estimate that our magnificent oceans have been getting less than 5% of the attention they deserve. Until now.
This week is the first time in world history that people have come together, from all over the globe, at the level of a UN high-level meeting, to talk about saving the oceans. Better late than never!
But still … it’s very late.
“Ocean is the new climate,” I’ve been telling anyone who is willing to listen. Lately, “anyone” has included everyone reading my Greenbiz column, North Star … the audience that listened to my recent opening keynote at European Maritime Day … and now, the visitors to our new website and social media channel, SDG14.net.
I’m playing with a phrase from fashion and TV (“Orange is the New Black”) to make a point: we have to lift ocean sustainability up to the same level of focus, attention, and action as climate change action. Urgently.
A four-bullet summary of bad news:
- There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic garbage floating around in our oceans, and the number is growing exponentially. By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish — if we let this trend continue.
- The oceans have experienced a 25% increase in acidity since we started measuring such things. This puts many kinds of ocean life at risk.
- Oxygen levels in the entire ocean are down 2% overall, and have declined up to 4% in some places — leading to numerous “dead zones”.
- The “Living Blue Planet Index”, WWF’s measure of how much life is in the sea, is down 50% since the 1970s.
Yes, you read that right: we’ve lost half the life in the ocean, in just a few decades.
See what I mean? Ocean must be the new climate, not just because we are losing ocean life fast … but also because the ocean and the climate are one integrated system. Ocean is not replacing climate on the world’s sustainability stage. It just deserves equal billing.
The Earth’s seas absorb somewhere between a quarter and a half of all the CO2 we emit, and about 90% of the heat caused by global warming. Without the oceans working as a buffer, we would be looking not at 2 or 3 degrees warming, but (as I heard a leading Swedish politician say just last week) at 30 degrees or more of temperature increase.
I could go on, citing unhappy statistics about fishing, pollutants, coral reefs and all the rest. But let’s change tack: what can we do about all these problems?
That’s where SDG14.net comes in.
In connection with this first, historic, UN global summit meeting on the fate of the oceans, we at AtKisson Group have launched a new, free information service named after the UN goal for preserving the sustainability of the oceans, SDG 14.
We’ll be covering the UN Ocean Conference itself. We introduce the politics behind it, describe the agreement it will reach. We explain the basics on SDG14, and we make complicated subjects like the negotiations around preserving ocean biodiversity on the high seas easier to fathom.
But more importantly, we tell you where to find the best information sources on action, related to specific topics the whole world is grappling with: overfishing, plastic pollution, ensuring the livelihoods of fisherfolk in developing countries, and much more. And we publish eyewitness reports from people who are taking action, right now, to advance understanding and change.
The ocean has big problems. Fortunately, there are people working on big solutions — such as Boyan Slat, the 22-year-old Dutch entrepreneur who has raised over $20 million to build new machines that can clean the sea of plastic garbage. We’re covering his work, and the work of others like him who are giving everything they’ve got to #SaveOurOcean (that’s the hashtag for the UN conference, and beyond).
So please, follow us. Put the ocean on your “sustainability to do list,” and reading list, as something we all simply must start learning about — and caring about — much more than we have before.
We’re on the web, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. We’re just getting started. We need followers, and we also invite submissions from writers and organizations, for publication on our site.
This is an experiment: can we build a sustainable “ocean audience”? If we build it, will that audience last past the first UN Ocean Conference?
I sincerely hope so. And I hope you’ll join us at http://SDG14.net … and keep reading WaveFront, too!
Warmly,
Alan AtKisson
Pres. AtKisson Group & Founding Editor, SDG14.net