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Main » 2010 » March » 5 » Defending our Oceans
4:57 PM Defending our Oceans |
 Seen from space the Earth is covered in a blue
mantle. It is a planet on which the continents are dwarfed by the
oceans surrounding them and the immensity of the marine realm.
A staggering 80 percent of all the life on Earth is to be found hidden
beneath the waves and this vast global ocean pulses around our world
driving the natural forces which maintain life on our planet.
The oceans provide vital sources of protein, energy, minerals and other
products of use the world over and the rolling of the sea across the
planet creates over half our oxygen, drives weather systems and natural
flows of energy and nutrients around the world, transports water masses
many times greater than all the rivers on land combined and keeps the
Earth habitable.
Without the global ocean there would be no life on Earth.
It is gravely worrying, then, that we are damaging the oceans on a scale that is unimaginable to most people.
We now know that human activity can have serious impacts on the vital
forces governing our planet. We have fundamentally changed our global
climate and are just beginning to understand the consequences of that.
As yet largely unseen, but just as serious, are the impacts we are having on the oceans.
A healthy ocean has diverse ecosystems and robust habitats. The actual state of our oceans is a far cry from this natural norm.
A myriad of human pressures are being exerted both directly and
indirectly on ocean ecosystems the world over. Consequently
ecosystems are collapsing as marine species are driven towards
extinction and ocean habitats are destroyed. Degraded and stripped of
their diversity, ocean ecosystems are losing their inherent
resilience.
We need to defend our oceans because without them, life on Earth cannot exist.
Dead oceans, dead planet
We need to defend them now more than ever, because the oceans need all
the resilience they can muster in the face of climate change and the
potentially disasterous impacts this is already beginning to produce in
the marine world.
The Greenpeace Defending our Oceans campaign sets out to protect and
preserve our oceans now and for the future by setting aside swathes of
the global oceans from exploitation and controllable human pressure,
allowing these areas the respite they so desperately need for recovery
and renewal.
Building on a protection and recovery system established to manage land
based over-exploitation, Marine Reserves are the ocean equivalent of
national parks.
Marine Reserves are a scientifically developed and endorsed approach to
redressing the crisis in our oceans which work alongside a range of
other measures designed to ensure that the demands we make of our
oceans are managed sustainably.
Beyond Marine Reserves we need to tackle a great many threats to the
oceans' viability and find better ways of managing their resources. To
this end, while Greenpeace campaigns for Marine Reserves, we also
campaign against the acts which have brought the oceans to this point -
we expose the countless pressures, reveal the threats, confront the
villains and point to the solutions and measures necessary to create
sustainable oceans.
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