Fish Feed the Planet--- Lets Increase the Harvest!!!
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC) and its partners are calling for 2021-2030 to become the International Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Key objectives:
Build an inventory of marine resources and identify opportunities to manage these resources in a sustainable manner
Gain a better quantitative knowledge of the ocean bottom and water column ecosystems
Understand the impacts of cumulative stressors on the ocean and recommend specific actions to obtain more benefit from the ocean.
Share knowledge and enhance capacities through the transfer of marine technology, leading to economic benefits for SIDS and Least Developed Countries. http://en.unesco.org/node/268984
“An International Decade of Ocean Science could help to build a shared information system based on trustworthy, science-based information, from all parts of the world ocean.”
Professor Peter M Haugan, Chair of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO
The development of the initiative towards a Decade of Ocean Science would help to increase public awareness about the urgent need for new science and use of existing science to increase our understanding of the cumulative impacts affecting our oceans. The First World Ocean Assessment found that much of the ocean is now seriously degraded and many fear there has been a global failure to integrate scientific evidence into the sustainable management of our oceans. A continued failure to address these problems is likely to create a destructive cycle of degradation that will ultimately deprive society of many of the benefits we currently derive from the ocean.
The International Decade of Ocean Science would stimulate the development of new observation technologies which could help to address many of our remaining information gaps, such as the mapping of the ocean space and its sub-soil in three dimensions. The entire process of developing and implementing the Decade could also help to build stronger cooperation between the different bodies responsible for ocean science while facilitating a faster and more effective delivery of knowledge to policy and decision-makers.