Last week Dan Laffoley and large international team set out their ideas for a new ocean narrative … close on their heals comes another one.

Executive Summary ‘The New Ocean Narrative Billions of people have personal connections to the ocean. For many people living in coastal communities, the ocean is not only a source of food and livelihoods, it is an intrinsic part of their culture and heritage. For the millions of people who earn their living from the ocean, it is a source of income and a way of life. For the 40 percent of the world’s population that live within 150 kilometres of the coast and the hundreds of millions of others who visit it, the ocean is central to their lives. The ocean plays an essential and usually unrecognised role in the daily lives of all of the planet’s inhabitants. Indeed, breathing itself would be impossible without the ocean, which produces half of the earth’s oxygen. The ocean is also an enormous economic asset. Around 90 percent of the world’s goods are traded across the ocean.

Hundreds of millions of people work in fishing and mariculture, shipping and ports, tourism, offshore energy, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics—all of which rely on ocean resources. By some estimates, the ocean economy directly contributes more than $1.5 trillion a year to the global economy. Putting a resource this critical at risk is reckless. But the world has not handled the ocean with care. Poor management has damaged many of the ocean’s assets and reduced the ocean’s natural ability to restore itself. Ocean health is on a downward spiral, preventing humanity from reaping the riches a healthy ocean could produce and jeopardising the future. The ocean is becoming warmer, more acidic, stormier, higher, more oxygen-depleted, less predictable and less resilient—and neither the problems it is facing nor the wealth it yields are distributed equitably. Climate change is disproportionately affecting vulnerable and marginalised people, many of whom depend on the ocean for nutrition, identity and income. As they battle a warming ocean and rising sea level, they increasingly face depleted and shifting fish stocks without the ability to change gear or travel further to fish or seek other sources of livelihood.’  To read more click here