UN's online atlas displays threats to world's oceans

The United Nations published an online global atlas of the world's oceans yesterday to try to preserve the threatened marine environment.

UN officials have described the atlas, which covers everything from sea-level rises to piracy, as "the most ambitious global scientific information collaboration ever online".

Environmentalists preparing for this year's World Summit in Johannesburg have identified the continuing degradation of the oceans as one of the most pressing issues of the day. The atlas, which is intended to act as a central database, will be updated regularly with the latest information, including development trends and threats to human health from pollution and degradation.

"The oceans play a crucial role in sustaining life on Earth," Jacques Diouf, the director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which led the initiative, said. "This important new tool ... will help co-ordinate and harmonise the work under way in various parts of the UN and in national agencies, academic institutions and other organisations, and will serve a major role in moving the world toward the sustainable use of oceans for food security and human development."

Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said the atlas constituted the first attempt to provide comprehensive information on changes to the ocean environment as they happened.

"The atlas is the result of extensive co-operation in the UN and with leading scientific agencies," he said. "It ... will make a significant contribution to events like the upcoming World Summit.

"Ocean-related issues will almost certainly dominate the international agenda later this century, if, as predicted, the Earth's continued warming accelerates sea-level rises and adds up to one metre to the height of our oceans."

Such a rise, the atlas suggests, could affect more than 70 million people in coastal China; 60 per cent of the population of Bangladesh and the Netherlands; 15 per cent of the people and 50 per cent of the industry in Japan; 10 per cent of the population of Egypt; and an area of 6,630 square miles (17,000 square kilometres)in the United States. In low-lying countries such as the Maldives or the Marshall Islands, the entire population would be at risk.

The atlas contains 14 global maps and links to hundreds of others, including 264 maps showing the parlous state of fisheries throughout the world.

It suggests that all 17 of the world's main fishing areas have reached or exceeded their natural limits, with nine in serious decline.

At the same time, coastal waters where fisheries once thrived are suffering from pollution run-off from the land, which has depleted the vital oxygen content of the seas. The number of poisonous algal species identified in the past 20 years has nearly tripled.

The atlas also contains a further 100 maps showing global ice cover, navigation routes, earthquake zones and volcanic activity, temperature gradients, seafloor contours, and salinity.

Russian and American oceanographic institutions, the National Geographic Society and the Census of Marine Life, a global biodiversity organisation based in Washington, have all contributed to the data.

The decision to put the atlas together is the result of a recommendation to monitor and improve the marine environment made at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.