The Ocean Planet
We provide here a copy of our publication The Ocean Planet — In this publication we review the serious challenges which our seas and oceans now face, and we outline proposals for fundamental changes in marine management to solve this crisis.
This new approach to management, built on the ecosystem-based approach, requires the return of sovereignty to the seas and oceans so that the integrity of their ecosystems has primacy — a primacy that must be recognised in the three pillared definition of sustainability which encompasses conservation and the economic and social uses of the sea.
As a result, management will in future be based on the immediate aim of licensing all human activities in the seas and oceans, including fishing, so that no activity occurs unless it can show that it is either leading to a restoration of biodiversityBiological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals., or will have no adverse impact on the ecosystems upon which that biodiversityBiological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals. depends. Out of this this licensing of all activity will emerge the new fundamental management principle for our seas and oceans — all seas and oceans possess their own sovereignty and have an inherent right to exist in a sound natural condition, and thus should be managed as if they are a single, universal marine reserve.