Brussels, 14/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - In order for the seas and oceans to serve as a basis for sustainable growth, allowing the EU to make full use of their economic potential, the marine environment needs to be in good health. However, its condition is deplorable. In Athens on Wednesday 14 May, the informal Environment Council, chaired by Ioannis Maniatis, the Greek Minister for the Environment and the Climate, made this clear, firmly convinced of the urgent need to act to counter the increasing pressure - pollution, eutrophication in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, overfishing, climate change - which poses a serious threat to the marine ecosystems and all they provide in terms of food, medicines, energy and tourism.
The environment ministers all recognised the need for the member states to redouble their efforts to achieve, by 2020, a good environmental state for the seas and oceans, to include this concern in all relevant policies - fisheries, industry, agriculture, waste management - and to step up cooperation at regional level and with third countries. In order to do this, they need to act at a local level to abide by the provisions of the framework directive on the marine strategy of the EU and reinforce cooperation efforts in the framework of the regional conventions of the sea (the Barcelona Convention, the Baltic Sea Convention, the Ospar Convention, the Black Sea Convention).
Janez Potocnik ticks off the member states. The declaration issued by the marine conference HOPE (Healthy Oceans-Productive Ecosystems), held in Brussels on 3 and 4 March of this year (see EUROPE 11023) called for urgent action. However, at the speed things are going, making the seas and oceans healthy and productive by 2020 is pie in the sky. The Environment Commissioner reminded ministers that “the monitoring programmes required by the directive must be adopted this year, and the measures approved in 2015. However, from what the Commission has been able to see so far, these are neither exhaustive nor ambitious enough to allow us to keep to our commitments. We need to speed up our efforts”, he warned (our translation).
The discussions of this informal Environment Council were fed into by a number of presentations, including one by Hans Bruynickx, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and one on marine waste in the regional seas by Professor Michael Scoullos of Athens University, the head of the Mediterranean environment programme. Professor Athanassios of the University of Thessaloniki addressed the council on fishing and blue growth, and Ioannis Karakassis, of the marine ecology laboratory of the University of Crete spoke about problems and progress in the Mediterranean.
40% of the EU's GDP is generated in the maritime regions; the temperature is rising faster in Europe's seas than in the other oceans of the planet; and 88% of fish stocks are under threat in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea. (AN)