Stop Plastic Pollution & End Shark Finning: Two Powerful Ocean Actions for the Earth Summit 2012

NRDC just formally submitted its views to the United Nations Secretariat for next year’s Rio+20 Earth Summit.  We asked that the gathering of world leaders in Rio de Janeiro next June produce concrete results: “Rio+20 should generate real actions on the part of governments at every level, as well as by businesses and civil society groups, to immediately deliver the necessary actions to put us all on a more sustainable path.” 

From growing the green economy, to tackling climate change, protecting human health, and saving our oceans, NRDC is dedicated to inspiring the public and creating the political will over the next seven months in our “Race to Rio” to generate specific commitments to immediately tackle the huge challenges we face.  Everyone can get involved by focusing on those matters of most importance to them, and calling on every country, corporation, and community to take action.

When it comes to protecting Earth’s embattled oceans, two results we hope to see from the Earth Summit are commitments to stop plastic pollution and to end the harvest, sale and trade of shark fins. 

NRDC joined members of the Catto Fellowship Program at the Aspen Institute and 24 other organizations in calling for the international community to stop talking and to start reducing the enormous quantities of plastic waste that has contributed to a vast plastic soup, concentrated in the 5 largest gyres of our oceans.  This plastic pollution has grave consequences for marine life and it persists in the oceans for hundreds, if not thousands of years.  We need immediate action to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans, including by banning or taxing single-use plastics, supporting the use of recycled plastics in new products, and holding manufacturers responsible for plastics through their entire life cycle.  Hundreds of nations, states, and cities around the world have already taken action to control single-use plastic bags, a prevalent and harmful type of plastic pollution around the world.

Similarly we need to get serious about protecting sharks.  Sharks are declining rapidly worldwide as a result of the demand for shark fins.  An estimated 26-73 million sharks are killed every year for their fins; and one-third of open-ocean sharks are threatened with extinction. There are simply not enough sharks to meet the demand for shark fins.  Sharks are extremely vulnerable to overfishing because they can take a decade or more to reach reproductive maturity and bear just a few young during their lifetime.  Chile, Palau, Guam, The Northern Mariana Islands, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, and the City of Toronto, have all recently taken bold action to protect sharks by either banning the practice of finning or the sale and trade of shark fins.  With more awareness about the toll finning takes on shark populations, view on eating shark fin soup are changing.  In a recent poll in Hong Kong, China 78% of respondents felt it was acceptable to not serve shark fin soup at wedding banquets; 85% expressed strong or moderate support for a ban on the importation of shark fins.  We are calling on individual nations, businesses, and the public to do their part to end the harvest, sale and trade of shark fins before sharks disappear from our seas.

Other important ocean protections NRDC calls for at the Rio+20 Earth Summit:

• Establish and monitor marine protected areas on the high seas and protect vulnerable marine ecosystems within national waters.
• Integrate assessment and management of the various uses of ocean resources (wildlife migration routes, fishing grounds, fossil fuel operations, shipping lanes, etc) using marine spatial planning techniques.
•  Reduce and control ocean noise pollution by incorporating noise into the design and management of marine protected areas and marine spatial plans, and by requiring use of best available noise-reduction technologies in commercial and industrial activities, including oil and gas exploration.
•  Stop “ghost fishing” – fishing gear lost or abandoned at sea that destroys fragile habitats and catches fish and mammals for decades after it is lost – by improving fishing technologies and providing incentives to prevent loss of gear and return old fishing equipment to shore for recycling.
• Establish an international monitoring network for ocean acidification to enable the identification of vulnerable regions and industries and to provide an early warning system for industries already experiencing harm.
• Designate the high seas of the Central Arctic Ocean as a zone for international scientific cooperation, where extractive and polluting activities are suspended until we have a better understanding of the area and the potential effects of such activities.

We all have a great opportunity to demand an end to talk and immediate action to protect the Planet and the People and ecosystem it supports.  Stay tuned to the Switchboard Earth Summit 2012posts for more updates and action alerts.

Photo: Nasa

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