MDG + 5 Summit: Moving Forward on Environmental Sustainability
From September 14-17, leaders from over 170 countries around the world will gather in New
York at the United Nations to attend the World Millennium + 5 Summit. Expected to be the
largest gathering of world leaders in history, it is a rare opportunity to make bold decisions on
issues related to poverty, sustainable development, human rights, world security and UN reform.
The leaders gathered at the Summit will address a series of promises, set forth in eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which they endorsed in 2000 during the Millennium
Summit. These eight goals range from eradicating extreme poverty and combating HIV/AIDS,
to ensuring environmental sustainability, with clear targets to be achieved by the year 2015. For
each of the goals, a task force of leading experts was established to identify the policy measures
needed to achieve each of the goals.
The Deep Ocean: The Last Frontier
The deep ocean is one of the last major frontiers of the planet, and is increasingly recognized as a
major global reservoir of the Earth’s biodiversity, comparable to the biodiversity associated with
tropical rainforests and shallow-water coral reefs. Estimates of the numbers of species inhabiting
the deep ocean range between 500,000 and 100 million.
However, the development of new fishing technologies and markets for deep-sea fish products
have enabled fishing vessels to begin exploiting these diverse but poorly understood ecosystems
by dragging huge, heavily-weighted nets across vast areas of seafloor. Deep sea environments
are particularly vulnerable to bottom trawling, because conditions there are typically stable and
unchanging. Recently, there are clear and increasing signs that high seas bottom trawl fisheries
are causing unprecedented damage to some of the most vulnerable ecosystems on our planet.
Without a comprehensive governance structure for the management of high seas deep sea bottom
fishing and the protection of seafloor habitats, commercial extinction of most targeted species
and biological extinctions of vast numbers of other marine species are likely.
MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Concerned with the rapid depletion of fish stocks and the destruction of coral reefs and other
critical aquatic habitats, the Task Force on Environmental Sustainability made several key
recommendations to address marine and fisheries ecosystems, including to:
1.
Eliminate Unsustainable fishing practices; and
2.
Establish a network of marine reserves
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Recommendation
The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition recommends that leaders at the Millennium Summit adopt
recommendations made by the UN Task Force on Environmental Sustainability by:
1. Adopting a moratorium on high seas bottom-trawl fishing, as it is the most
destructive fishing practice threatening the biodiversity of the world’s oceans; and
2. Establishing a global network of marine protected areas to preserve biodiversity and
sustainable resources for development.
The decisions made in New York will determine whether or not the Millennium Development
Goals are truly attainable or merely empty promises. In accordance with the commitments made
at the Millennium Summit in 2000, we urge governments to support the recommendations made
by the Task Force on Environmental Sustainability to ensure that the biodiversity of the world’s
oceans are not destroyed and are available for many future generations to come.
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The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) is an affiliation of over 50 environmental organizations from around
the world that are working together to protect seamounts, cold-water corals and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems.
The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition is calling on the United Nations General Assembly to secure a moratorium on
high seas bottom trawling and protect these fragile and unique pockets of life in the deep seas before they are
destroyed forever. Additional information about the DSCC’s work can be found on its website at
www.savethehighseas.org.
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