His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales points out the vital importance of the oceans to all life on earth, and urges Commonwealth countries to play a positive role in ensuring that worthy commitments are turned into practical action.
For quite some time I have been increasingly concerned about the marine environment and the plight of the global oceans. To say that healthy oceans are of critical importance to humanity is self-evident; we cannot survive without them, and nor should we try. The marine environment is of vast importance due to its role in food security, in coastal employment and livelihoods, global biodiversity and, of course, in the regulation of the global climate. At its most fundamental, our oceans are inextricably linked to the very air we breathe, and to the sustenance of the earth’s increasingly and unsustainably burgeoning population. Eighty per cent of all life on Earth lives in the ocean and over half of the world’s oxygen is produced by ocean-borne phytoplankton.
However, whether in the decline of wild fisheries around the world, the death of the albatross and so many other iconic species, the pollution of the seas or ocean acidification, the evidence of the deterioration of our treasured marine world is all too abundant…
*Statistics within article correct at original publication date of CHOGM 2015 Report.
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
