“The oceans are in a worse situation than most people think”, it was in this way that Tiago Pitta e Cunha, CEO of the Oceano Azul Foundation set the tone for the discussion on the health and sustainability of the oceans. The environmentalist was one of the speakers at the BNP Paribas Sustainable Future Forum (SFF) 2022, which took place in Lisbon, with the central global theme Navigating the Transition, discussing how we can work on the path of transition to achieve net zero emissions before 2050.
The CEO of the Oceano Azul Foundation added that in recent years much attention has been paid to the decrease in biomass, the result of overfishing (along with illegal fishing), today pollution through plastics has become a much more mediatic problem. “And today, of course, we realize that the greatest impact on the oceans is climate change”, and this is because the oceans are not only an important tool for mitigating these changes, but are seriously affected by them. After all, it is a resource that has existed for thousands of years and is responsible for “30% of biodiversity”.
Tiago Pitta e Cunha also drew attention to another problem: the temperature. Until recently, it was thought that the temperature was rising in the tropics and in the most surface waters, but the latest scientific discoveries have revealed that, in fact, all oceans are warming. “It is a global problem”, notes the CEO of the Oceano Azul Foundation, adding that this not only means that the Arctic is melting, but also that Antarctica is already showing signs of the same. Which has the consequence of rising sea waters and, with that, that, probably, most of the food produced and rivers like the Delta, in the future will be in submerged zones.
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