Time is running out to sustainably manage a global ocean system that is under increasing threat due to the effects of climate change, pollution, and fishing practices, according to a new global assessment of the world's ocean mandated by the United Nations which will be presented this week to a working group of member nations and observers.
The 55-chapter report, the first of its kind to assess the state of oceans on a global scale was requested by the UN and completed by a global pool of experts including Elise Granek, associate professor of Environmental Science and Management at Portland State University (PSU). Granek, who is a PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions Fellow and co-director of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program focused on ecosystem services for urbanizing regions, coauthored chapters on the services marine ecosystems provide to society and another on the global mangrove ecosystems.
The assessment covered a range of issues including the impacts of climate change, ice coverage, the frequency of storms, ocean acidification, land-based activities, unsustainable fishing practices, shipping activities, invasive species, and marine debris. In addition to synthesizing the range of global ocean problems, the report also revealed gaps in the experts' collective knowledge that require further research.
"There is a lot of scientific data in this report but we tried to keep it accessible," said Granek, who is a fellow of the PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions. "This report is a baseline. It shows were the data gaps are and where we just don't have enough information."
Granek said the assessment is, in some ways, a global follow up to two US-focused comprehensive reports on the fragile ocean ecosystem - the nongovernmental Pew Oceans Commission report of 2003 and the congressionally mandated U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy in 2004.
Granek was one of nearly 600 scientists in the UN's Pool of Experts that was charged with producing the report, and one of three of those experts from Oregon.
The first World Ocean Assessment will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly's Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole of the Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment at a meeting that begins today in New York.