Why have a Global Programme of Action?

The Context

The major threats to the productivity and biodiversity of the marine environment result from human activities on land in coastal areas and further inland. Most of the pollution load entering the oceans, including municipal, industrial and agricultural wastes and run-off emanates from a multitude of land-based activities. Oceans have become the final destination for municipal sewage and solid waste, chemical discharges from factories upstream, fertilizer run-off and other pollution from farms and oil spills. Once unleashed, such pollution can seldom be controlled; it must be stopped at source.

Pollution from the land affects the marine and coastal environment, including estuaries and inshore coastal waters, which are highly productive areas. The environment is also threatened by physical alterations of the coastal zone and activities such as dam construction further upstream. Both are destroying habitats of vital importance for ecosystem health. At the same time, the health, well-being and, in some cases, the very survival of coastal populations depend largely upon the health and the maintenance of ecological functioning of the coastal ecosystems: estuaries and wetlands, as well as their associated watersheds, drainage basins, near-shore coastal waters, wetlands, mangrove forests and coral reefs.
 
Some 1 billion people live in coastal urban centers. Many national economies depend on coastal and marine activities that would be directly threatened by degradation of the marine environment; industries such as fishing and tourism are obvious examples. The subsistence economy as well as food security of large coastal populations, especially in developing countries, is based on marine living resources that would be threatened by such degradation.
 
Distribution of global gross domestic product (GDP) between three ecosystems (coastal, marine and terrestrial) show the coast contributes 38% of the total (see Chart below).

Notwithstanding the paramount importance of the coast as indicated above, the world’s coasts are threatened by development-related activities. The intense pressures put on these coastal systems require serious commitment and preventive action at all levels – local, national and global.

Rights, responsibilities and obligations of States and regional and international organisations with regard to the protection and sustainable development of the marine and coastal environment and resources contained therein are clearly set forth in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other international agreements including Agenda 21 and the Convention on Conservation of Biodiversity. The duty of the States and regional and international organisations to protect the marine environment from land-based activities was clearly defined in the context of sustainable development by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992.