Oceanographer Carlos Duarte believes it Health and life in the oceans can be restored in 30 years “with determination and effort”some areas that could be the future of food and provide three million square kilometers of sustainable crops.
“I wouldn’t say it’s an optimistic message, rather a hopeful one. Optimism is a vital attitude that assumes that everything will be okay without having to do anything, and that hope is rooted in effort and determination,” Duarte explains. In an interview with Efe, one of the top authorities on aquatic ecosystems research.
After a summer of rising sea temperatures and news of heat waves, fires and droughts painting an apocalyptic panorama, Duarte, Leon confirms this, attending the “Despesques 2022” meeting in Cádiz, organized by “chief of the seas” Ángel there is a “prerequisite” to staying safe: “Don’t lose hope that a healthy ocean is still possible.”
“Very negative headlines about the future of the planet, climate change, loss of species… Hopelessness eventually leads to apathy and apathy when trying to contribute to the future.“, Says.
He assures that the mission will require the same investment as sending a rocket to Mars, and it’s not impossible at all: “the role of scientists is to redefine the limits of what’s possible every day.”
Five areas of action for hope
Awarded the Alejandro Malaspina National Natural Resources Science and Technology Research Award in 2017 and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2021, the scientist explains that when this prerequisite is met, there are five areas of action that will allow the oceans to be enjoyed. health.
Maintain spaces; conservation of species; “intelligently” harvesting the ocean with a commitment to innovative and healthy “blue” foods; eliminating pollution (by reducing plastic consumption, among other measures) and mitigating climate change “With our greatest ambitions, because if it fails to do so, most of the value of the other shares will go to waste.”
“I would say that the state of the oceans is better than it was at the beginning of the century.. There has been some recovery thanks to the policies that were put into practice at the end of the last century and started to bear tangible fruits. In the case of populations such as humpback whales and other marine mammals; the increase in the percentage of fishing stocks is not yet sufficient; in reducing certain types of pollution or expanding projects for the restoration of marine habitats,” he states, after noting that the protected surface of the sea has increased from 0.4 percent at the beginning of the century to ten percent these days.
The fight against climate change is not advancing
“Where we fail to make progress is in our fight against climate change, because emissions continue to rise and are not falling as much as they should,” he complains.
“We continue to make progress in the fight against climate change. And we now see the inconsistencies in this fight as a response to the crisis of the occupation of Ukraine. reverse any of the plans and even playing around with whether gas and nuclear power are green energy to justify their use and expansion, or even to reopen coal plants, as has been done in Germany”.
In the fight against climate change, this trajectory “is not what we should take at all. We are already approaching that threshold of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperature, which is the best-case scenario envisioned by the Paris Agreement.”
“At 1.3 degrees of warming,” he explains this summer was “good proof” of what was “thrown at us”.
“Something terribly different has happened, we’ve only taken one step in the warming trajectory of the oceans we’ve been tracking. The Spanish Mediterranean has reached 30 degrees for the first time, but has already reached 29.5.”
Of all marine ecosystems, ice has the most negative future.“It will continue to disappear and we won’t be able to reverse it because not just to stop climate change, but to reverse it, to cool the planet, is something we can maybe do in the future, but not in this century”.
The future of food is in the oceans
Duarte, a professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, is focusing his latest research on coral and macroalgae cultivation in the Red Sea. believes that the future of food is in the oceans and that it does not kill your lifeBy growing sustainable and healthy blue superfoods like seaweed or “sea rice”, which Ángel León works with.
The scientist explains that there are currently only 2,000 square kilometers devoted to him on the entire planet and that “We could sustainably have close to three million. The current surface could be multiplied 2,000 times.”
“They don’t need herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers. They don’t transform ecosystems, you don’t have to cut down a forest. “raising them and injecting oxygen into the water, removing CO2, trapping carbon, producing ecological benefits rather than harming ecosystems and the environment.”
It is an alternative and a solution to the continuous reduction of cultivation areas on land, which will accelerate with the increase of droughts.
It also “could have a very positive impact in tackling climate change because the food production sector is responsible for around 20% of greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.
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