3 Questions: Greg Britten on how marine life can recover by 2050
As the largest ecosystem on the planet, the ocean provides incredible resources and benefits to humanity — including contributing 2.5 percent of global GDP and 1.5 percent of global employment, as well as regulating our climate, providing clean energy, and producing much of the oxygen we breathe. But exploitation and human pressures — like pollution, overfishing, and climate change — have stressed its life-support systems, depleting biodiversity, reducing habitats, and undermining ocean productivity. Study and public awareness of the of these problems, as well as the beauty of these ecosystems, has led to conservation efforts beginning in the 1980s. By that time, however, significant damage had been done and some losses were permanent. Years of increased management and international policy since then have made measurable gains. At the same time, growing human populations are leaning harder on ocean resources. Understanding the critical need to rebuild these habitats and species populations has...