Pollute Not the Oceans

Pollute Not the Oceans


Ganga Prasad G. Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar


It was, with Africa, the Arctics and the Antarctic, one of the ultimate unknowns, the ultimate expanse, the fear of many a mariner in the centuries gone by. No longer. Today, practically every inch of the ocean is mapped. No sea, strait or island has escaped the marauding humans. It is perhaps an unwritten law of nature that destruction follows where man sets foot. After turning the atmosphere and land in to the toilet of the industry, overrunning lakes, and polluting rivers, it is now our hallowed duty to commit the ultimate insult to God's world. Let's exploit the purity of the oceans as well!

Not that it has escaped our attention. Honestly, if the oceans are yet sought after, it is not because we haven't tried to despoil it. Those ignorant or otherwise not informed may wonder if human activity has left any mark on the ocean systems. For one, the ocean waters are noticeably warmer, thanks to human activity. A warmer ocean means more evaporation, more humidity and rainy afternoons. Not too long ago, the media reported changes in ocean currents, thanks to global warming. Imagine a world with the Labrador current turning warmer and exacerbating the melting of the ice in the Arctic circle. Imagine the hapless creatures of the deep when their migratory and reproductive patterns are overturned and overrun by human-induced climate change. Sea-level rise caused by melting of polar ice caps could overrun beaches and coastal eco-systems that took centuries to develop. We discharge treated (and untreated) sewage in to the oceans, sometime not half a kilometer from beach revelers. The floods wash in to oceans stuff that escapes the sewers. Oil spills during crude/product transfer at the port or from grounding of tankers make news headlines ever so often. Add to that the widening and deepening of ports and shallow straits, land reclamation from shallow seas, sub-marine archaeological digs, mid-sea dumping of garbage, the discharge of water and sewage from cruise liners, discharges from deep-sea oil production, and the ever expanding global trade by sea, and what do you have? We don't need a rocket scientist to tell us that human influences are fundamentally, and perhaps irreversibly, altering the physical, chemical and biological systems of the oceans and that could mean the difference between life and death for marine creatures.

The more I think of these matters, the more I am convinced that human economic systems will always expand by exploiting unpriced resources and their services (land, air, lakes, rivers and oceans) without limits (or more correctly, until resource deterioration hurts the capitalist's purse). We could price these resources in, but achieving that through regulations in 110 countries with 22 different types of legislative/judicial processes amid the not infrequent changes of governments, despite the Sea Conventions and IMO rules, can be a very discouraging experience. Why not create a single global stewardship of the oceans, much like the GEF, but smaller and more focused, and endow it with the right to police and exact payments for various services provided by oceans across the seven seas? If a Sustainable Oceans Administration were funded by matching its profits (revenues from services net of costs of environmental remediation) from the stewardship of the oceans, then, it would have the incentive to permit truly sustainable exploitation of the oceans. It would have, on one hand, the knowledge to price ocean services according to demand and the damage imposed, and on the other, the werewithal to fund corrective actions that limit environmental damage to the oceans.

What's that I hear? ..... Sure, we could wait until the sea turns green from human avarice and apathy!