conservation tagged posts

Unregulated mining in the deep sea should not be allowed to go ahead, the head of the United Nations has warned. “The deep sea cannot become the Wild West,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France. His words were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the “oceans are not for sale”.

The remarks appear to refer to the decision by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits for the extraction of critical minerals in international waters.

There is increasing interest in extracting precious minerals from what are called metallic “nodules” that naturally occur on the seabed.

But marine scientists are concerned about the harm that could be caused.

“The ocean is not for sale...

World leaders will meet at the UN in New York later for more talks to save the world’s oceans from overexploitation. The UN High Seas Treaty has been through 10 years of negotiations but has yet to be signed. If agreed, it would put 30% of the world’s oceans into conservation areas by 2030. Campaigners hope it will protect marine life from overfishing and other human activities.

Two-thirds of the world’s oceans are currently considered international waters, which mean all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research there. But only 1.2% of these high seas, as they are referred to, are protected.

This leaves the marine life living there at risk of exploitation from the increasing threats of climate change, overfishing and shipping traffic.

And with ecosystems in the high...

Canada is an ocean nation with the longest coastline in the world. Canadians rely on healthy marine ecosystems to sustain our economy, our food supply, and our coastal communities. But the ocean is a shared resource that requires a global effort to ensure marine conservation. That is why the Government of Canada is joining other countries to advocate for international action to increase conservation and protection of our oceans by 2030.

Today, during the Protecting the Oceans Most Important Places webinar, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, announced Canada has joined the United Kingdom and other countries in the Global Ocean Alliance...

The pandemic has disrupted conservation work and funding, with potential repercussions for years to come, according to conservation groups. But we can seize the opportunity to push for stronger action to protect the natural world, say Dr Diogo Veríssimo and Dr Nisha Owen from campaign group On The Edge Conservation.

The pandemic struck in what was meant to be a landmark year for biodiversity.

New goals for protecting the natural world are due to be agreed in October.

While lockdown has been linked to a number of positive environmental changes, including wildlife reclaiming urban spaces, we know very little about how large areas of the world that host vast quantities of biodiversity have been faring, said Dr Owen.

“There’s reports coming in of illegal activities happening on the ground th...

Ready, steady, action!

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many across the world are figuring out how to move forward with day-to-day activities as the plans to address the health, socio-economic and recovery issues take shape. But nature, now more than ever, needs us to pay attention to its warning signals and to take care of it so it can take care of us.

With this in mind, creative minds at home—teachers, students, parents, children and families—are invited to bring to life, through video skills, videos on why the world needs to save an important component of the planet’s rich biodiversity. For this online challenge, the focus is the world’s magical coral reefs, home to a quarter of sea life.

Get involved

The task is to create a short video about why the world needs to urgently support...

Legendary American cartoon character Popeye the Sailor is teaming up with the French environmental organization, The SeaCleaners, to highlight the importance of conservation and cleaning the world’s oceans. Based in Brittany, the organization focuses on raising awareness and long-term, worldwide preservation of the ocean. It also develops solutions to clear the ocean of floating plastic pollution.

A staggering 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year. Last year, divers found a plastic KFC bag from the 1970s during an ocean clean-up off the waters off Bulcock Beach in Queensland, Australia and during a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench – the deepest point in the ocean – a plastic bag was found.

Popeye himself was created by Elzie Crisler Segar, ...

Despite being treated as humanity’s rubbish dump for decades, the oceans of the world are proving remarkably resilient, says a new scientific review. Building on that resilience could lead to a full recovery within three decades, the researchers argue.

Climate change, and the challenges of scaling up existing conservation efforts, are the big hurdles, they say.

The researchers caution that the window for action is now very narrow.

• UN panel signals red alert on ‘Blue Planet’
• Ocean plastic tide ‘violates the law’
• Ocean plastic could triple in decade

The oceans have been exploited by humans for centuries, but the negative impacts of our involvement have only become clear over the last 50 years or so.

Fish and other marine species have been hunted almost to extinction, while oil spills and ...

The ocean, as we’re all learning quickly, isn’t too big to fail. Every week brings more news of warming waters, declining species, increasing marine pollution, and the consequences of leaving those problems unaddressed. To give marine wildlife and ecosystems—and the billions of people who depend on them—a shot at a sustainable future, policymakers around the world must take decisive action soon.

Fortunately, the United Nations appears poised to do its part. UN member countries are close to finalising a treaty that would bring much-needed protections to the high seas—the waters beyond national jurisdiction that make up nearly two-thirds of the ocean.

The high seas start 200 nautical miles from shore, a remoteness that for centuries helped shield these waters from the impacts of hu...

In 1990, as NASA’s Voyager I spacecraft traveled beyond Neptune’s orbit on the way to becoming the first human-made object ever to leave our solar system, its imaging team implemented an idea originally proposed by astronomer Carl Sagan, turning the camera around for one last look at Earth before entering interstellar space.

The image it beamed back showed Earth as nothing more than a pale blue dot. Sagan observed: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

So, how are we faring as custodians of the blue part of our planet, Earth’s oceans? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be: very poorly. In a new study published in One Earth, we aimed ...

Only a fraction of the marine areas meant to be protected by the European Union are being properly conserved at present, according to a new report. The research – by the World Wide Fund for Nature and Sky Ocean Rescue – says less than 2% of the EU’s waters are being properly managed, compared to the target of over 12%.

Janica Borg from the World Wide Fund for Nature told Euronews’ Good Morning Europe that the aim of the protected areas is very important:

“The aim of protected areas is to conserve biodiversity so that we can ensure that the oceans are conserved for future generations.

“Not only that, it’s also important for a stable blue economy; this means greater use of marine sectors and is something the EU is currently developing.

“Currently, there’s good intentions for protection...