Defending our oceans

The causes are all too often man-made: unsustainable and destructive fishing practices, oil and gas exploration, sand and gravel extraction, shipping, climate change and more.

The European Union's (EU) coastline stretches over 100,000 km and seas make up more than half of its territory. 16% of the EU-25 population lives in coastal municipalities and many more work nearby or visit the seaside. Even so, Europe's marine waters are amongst the most degraded on the planet.

They are being failed by fishermen that lower their nets where no haul remains, by industrial operators that scrape the seabed like a harrowed field, by ship crews, public authorities and individuals that dump and discard unwanted wastes into the surf as if the ocean was a bottomless pit, and by developers and builders who tarmac the coastal periphery to leave no space for the rising tide. But most of all our oceans and seas are being failed by politics - and its sector-by-sector approach that reduces entire seascapes to economic capital.

Decisions are made about fish, motorways of the sea, oil and gas reserves, open-cast mining and coastal real estate in a vacuum, ignoring the fact that these sectors are often inextricably linked. This blinkered approach has exhausted what were once rich and diverse ecosystems.

Today, 60-100% of economically exploited fish stocks are overexploited or at risk of collapse; the biomass of top predators, such as tuna and swordfish, has decreased by two-thirds in the past 50 years; and an estimated two-thirds of Europe's coastal wetlands have disappeared in the same period of time.