Healthy Ocean and Waters: A Public Good

• Author: Pascal Lamy - Peter Heffernan - Klara Ramm - Boyan Slat - Antidia Citores - Darko Manakovski - Tiago Pitta e Cunha - Valentin Moldoveanu - Lowri Evans - Aristomenis Karageorgis - Alan Deidun - Gesine Meissner - Lea Kauppi - François Galgani - Maria Cristina Pedicchio - Geneviève Pons
• Pages: 3-6

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MISSION STARFISH 2030: RESTORE OUR OCEAN AND WATERS

Healthy ocean and waters are taken for granted. Yet, they are in trouble and

need to be restored. We call on all European citizens and policy makers to take

responsibility for protecting and regenerating rivers, lakes, seas and ocean and

demand urgent systemic change from our politicians and leaders.

1 Healthy Ocean and Waters: A Public Good

The ocean, seas, coastal and inland waters form a single system – the water

cycle1, which covers around 75 percent of the Earth’s surface2. All forms of life

depend on it, and in particular:

 The hydrosphere provides us with the water we drink, the air we breathe and

the food we eat. All our drink ing water, half of the oxygen produced on our

planet and around one sixth of the animal protein we eat comes from the

ocean and waters.

 It regulates our climate and our weather. Ocean and waters absorb, store, and

transport the heat supp lied by the sun. The organisms that live in them use

sunlight to transform inorganic carbon into biological m aterial. They are t he

planet’s largest and most important carbon sink and its ecosystems buffer the

impacts of global warming, absorbing 26 percent of anthropogenic CO2 and

around 93 percent of the excess heat produced by global warmi ng during the

period 1971-2010.

 The ocean and waters are home to hotspots of global biodiversity and the

planetary genome and prov ide us with essential goods and services (energy,

novel medicines, raw materials, transport, and food).

 They are a place of leisure, well-being and growing blue economy and trade.

Over 40 percent of the EU population lives in coastal areas, where marine and

freshwater environments are interlinked with culture, identity and sense of

belonging.

Our ocean and waters are public goods. We are all responsible, individually and

collectively, for their protection and health. This requires changing our

perspective and considering the ocean and waters as having a value that needs

1 Heated by the sun, water evaporates from land and sea into the atmosphere where it cools and

condensates. From the atmosphere, water is released back into sea and land through rain and snow. On

land, water runs off through rivers or below the surface as groundwater back into the sea. In this

continuous proces s, water changes through solid, liquid and gaseous states, but the total amount of

water in the system remains constant. Around 9с.о percent of the world’s water can be found in the

ocean, with 1.93 pe rcent stored in glaciers and ice caps, 1.75 percent in groundwater and only around

0.02 percent in surface water.

2 Pieri, D.C. et Dziewons ki, A.M.. н00т. “Earth as a Planet: Surface and Interior” in McFadden et al. eds.

Encyclopaedia of the Solar System. Elsevier Academic Press, Amster dam: pp.189-193.