“Blue Acceleration” : this is how we could have titled our cover story this week, like the New Scientist, which, in April, devoted its front page to the oceans. It is the main article of this issue that we have chosen to translate and publish on the occasion of the second UN Conference on the Oceans, which took place in Lisbon from 27 June to 1is July. Its objective: to strengthen action in favor of the oceans based on science and innovation.
Due to events in the United States (the Supreme Court’s blow to abortion rights), we have decided to delay the publication of this dossier. It is no less topical. Humanity is facing a “ocean emergency”, declared in particular António Guterres, the Secretary General of the UN, in Lisbon. And there is indeed cause for concern, reminds us the New Scientist.
The expression “blue acceleration”, explains the newspaper, designates the repercussions of the very strong increase in the exploitation of resources by man in recent years, and its impact on biodiversity and the environment. Gold “the ocean concentrates a lot of hopes and expectations, as a new economic frontier and as a driver of future human development”, advances one of the many researchers quoted by the scientific information magazine.
“The economy of the sea is worth 1,700 billion dollars, almost half of which is derived from the offshore production of oil and polluting gases (830 billion dollars [790 milliards d’euros] per year), followed by the construction of maritime equipment, fisheries and container transport”, further details the article of New Scientist.
“In this list, the sustainable sectors of tomorrow are almost invisible.”
This is one of the many issues raised by the magazine. Deep-sea mining, industrial fishing, maritime transport… For thirty years, the often anarchic development of human activities has wreaked havoc in an environment where regulations are almost non-existent. The economy of the sea being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a “handful of companies”, all located in six countries – the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, Norway, France and the United Kingdom – investment in sustainable projects is rare.
It’s time for that to change, wants to believe the New Scientist, which calls for more regulation. But there are reasons for hope. Seventy countries have pledged “to protect 30% of land, freshwater areas and oceans by 2030”. It’s a beginning. All over the world, protected maritime areas are multiplying, as in the micro-state of Niue, in the Pacific, or in the Dominican Republic… An article not to be missed.
In a completely different register, but still about the oceans, we are starting a new series in pages 360 of this issue, “Histoires de mer” (after our summer “Voyage en France”), the first part of which largely echoes the issues raised in the case. But in a completely different tone.
A journalist from The time embarked on theElisabeth Mann Borgese, a research vessel that bears the name of a pioneer in ocean exploration, who remained unknown for a long time: the daughter of the great German writer Thomas Mann.
A funny trip to the Baltic rocked by the writings of a father who loved the sea so much: “The sea is present in every page of his writings, writes the author. The sea is a place that inspires nostalgia, where we surrender, where we become one with nature and the past.”
But the real discovery of this article is indeed Elisabeth Mann Borgese, who devoted her life to the oceans. “A drunkenness, however, less poetic and attached to the past than political, utopian, open to the future”, write again The time, admiration for this visionary whose work largely inspired the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
At the end of her life, according to the German weekly, she would have said:
“The realists of today are the dead of tomorrow. And today’s utopians are tomorrow’s realists.
A must-read portrait.