The UN chief announced an initiative on Sunday to protect oceans from pollution and overfishing and combat rising sea levels that may imperil the lives of several hindered million people on Earth.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the initiative, the Oceans Compact, in the South Korean coastal city of Yeosu, which is currently hosting the EXPO-2012 World Fair dedicated to the environmental problems of the Ocean and the coastal area.
"Our oceans are heating and expanding. We risk irrevocable changes in processes that we barely comprehend, such as the great currents affecting weather patterns,” the UM chief said at a conference on the 30th anniversary of signing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"Ocean acidification is eating into the very basis of our ocean life and the sea level rise threatens to redraw the global map at the expense of hundreds of millions of the world's most vulnerable people,” he said.
The Oceans Compact initiative outlines an action plan for the United Nations to work more effectively in this area and “improve the health of the oceans,” he said.
“The world’s oceans are key to sustaining life on the planet,” he said, adding the new initiative was also aimed at protecting people from ocean degradation and natural disasters such as tsunamis, and from overfishing and pollution by land and sea activities.
