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Oceans
Blue Society, the project fostering a sustainable relationship between humans and oceans
Si è svolta a Bruxelles la conferenza di presentazione della Blue society, organizzazione nata per favorire una gestione collettiva e sostenibile del mare.
What happens underneath the water seems so distant and mysterious to us. It is an alien world, unfit to man, which is born to live on dry land. Yet if we look at our planet from space, we would realise that blue is the dominant colour. Indeed, water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface.
Oceans gave life to everything, and life could end without them. They regulate climate, produce part of the oxygen we breathe, sustain millions of people every year, are necessary for the production of many medicines, and are home to an incredible biodiversity. However, oceans’ health is extremely fragile due to increasing man-related activities.
The safeguard of oceans was the very issue tackled on 18 November in occasion of the presentation of the Blue Society project at the European Parliament in Brussels. The initiative, managed by the organisation Sea for Society, has been joined by over 500 European stakeholders, researchers, economists, politicians, and entrepreneurs, committed to building a “blue society” able to encourage a collective and sustainable management of oceans.
The event in Brussels, organised in collaboration with the European Parliament Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development, represented the perfect occasion to bring together ideas and solutions aimed at improving the relationship between humans and oceans.
“Ocean acidification is invisible, oxygen production is invisible, and all ecosystem services are invisible. It is thus necessary to show these phenomena to society and underline their huge importance,” said one of the lecturers, doctor Tiago Pitta e Cunha, environmental consultant of Portugal’s President.
The project, realised by Sea for Society, aims to raise governments’ and public’s awareness on the importance of oceans, supporting actions aimed to protect sea and improve the management of this shared heritage.
The conference, moderated by Ricardo Serrao Santos, European Deputy and former Head of the Department of Oceanography and Fishery of the University of the Azores, pointed outoceans’ high economic value, able to generate some 5.4 million jobs in Europe, equal to almost 500 billion euros per year.
“We need to learn from errors made by other economic models,” said Sarrao Santos. “Particularly, those that altered the planet’s balance over the past centuries, giving life to climate change”.
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