Ambitious targets to improve the world’s oceans with US$1.5 billion in new funding have been set by a coalition headed by the World Bank. Many of the targets appear to mirror existing goals, but the move has been welcomed by conservation groups.
Unveiling the new Global Partnership for Oceans in Singapore, the bank’s president Robert Zoellick said that governments, non-governmental organizations and United Nations (UN) bodies had signed up to a more coordinated approach to ocean conservation, science and business.
“To make our oceans healthy and productive again, we need greater cooperative and integrated action around the globe, so that our efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts,” said Zoellick.
He hopes to raise $1.5 billion in new money from governments, the private sector and other groups to operate and monitor protected areas and reform governance arrangements around fishing and other marine activities over five years.
Among the specific targets outlined by Zoellick for the new partnership are rebuilding at least half of the fish stocks now identified by researchers as depleted, and increasing and cleaning up aquaculture so that fish farming can provide two-thirds of the world’s fish. Many countries are already committed to attempting to maintain or restore fish stocks under the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.
Increasing the number of marine protected areas to 5% of ocean area from the present total of less than 2% is also among the partnership targets, although no date was announced for this. The 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity already calls for 10% of the oceans to be protected by 2020, a date already pushed back from the original target of 2012 (see Uncertain sanctuary).
In a statement, Washington DC-based environmental group Conservation International said that the move was a “critical step” towards catalyzing funding on ocean conservation.
“No organization has the ability to single-handedly resolve the challenges facing the world’s oceans. Working with the World Bank in this Partnership, we bring together governments, businesses, financial institutions and local communities to support healthy and productive oceans in a way we could not have done alone,” said Sebastian Troëng, vice-president of marine conservation at Conservation International.
Image: Atlantic sunrise photo by Dan Century via Flickr under creative commons.