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Will a voluntary citizen based campaign work to protect the ocean? If so, what can be done?
We currently protect less than 1% of the world's oceans. 90% of the world's fish stocks are gone. Can we as a society start a voluntary initiative to protect at least 30% of the world's ocean. It is evident that current extraction from the ocean is not sustainable. Very few countries are doing their part to create Marine Sanctuaries on their coasts.
How can we join all the voices to work together on this? Many organizations are busy with "process", few are actually doing something about it. Most governments are not actively pursuing a program to work towards setting aside areas to be fully protected.
Josh S
This is probably a pretty obvious answer and perhaps it's not providing any new ideas, but I just think a serious effort to understand why current efforts are failing could be fruitful for thinking and implementing new methods to obtain and use public interest and support. From a personal point of view I can say this much: As an average citizen who is not a part of any ocean conservation groups, I am interested in our efforts as a people to protect our ocean. It's just that I, and I suspect others like me, do not know how we can help. Being so far from a coastline I fail to see what I can do besides donating money, but even that seems fruitless if you're here posting about the current methods getting nowhere.
neil cheney
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
http://www.coralcay.org/content/view/294/537/
I think for an marine protection programs to work and win support an dcooperation..all afftected stakeholders have to be invoved in the planning and implementation.
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Who are the Global Conservation fund..are they legit..??
http://www.conservation.org/act/get_involved/protect_oceans/Pages/save_a_mile.aspx
This link is to their oceans programs. Has anyone heard of them are they doing good work?
Joe Delsen 20+
Ironically, if a CEO were to manage our oceans, it would have all these reports and from these could direct which solution strategies to implement. This is one of the ideas I'm driving at - how can we organize all these information and see and direct our progress?
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
My thinking was going in the same dircetion..how to help folk navigate what is going on on globally and how we can intersect with it.
So you know this group? Something about it isn't sitting right with me..the board of Dircetors for example..the head of wlamart, mcDonaldsm, a lotlf te all street hedge fund guys..lightweights..a few lightweights in conservation. There aren' any decsriptions of their actual work what they actually do and some of the language is too reminiscent of "privatiszation" a la Wolrd Bank & IMF. Do you know them? Do you have any information about their actual work?
Joe Delsen 20+
I'm more concerned about the total picture and clear benchmarks and who is leading all this work. When we can organize all the information and rally all the NGOs to implement effective and efficient solutions, then I think we're on to something. Where do you think we can collaborate and lead this effort?
Joe Delsen 20+
Our suggestions here are all important contributions. Ben talked about legislation which is solution 4 in what I describe as our solution stragegies (http://bit.ly/SolutionStrategies). Lindsay's idea is also great - individual stewardship and education which is a foundational solution as Paul also noted. Ray's vegetarian solution is also revolutionary which also need to be part of our education and information campaign. We can work more with the UN with the already existing Law of the Sea that Julie noted.
Roy we can solve this problem by attacking it in all fronts. Solution 1 for time-critical factors that we need to address right now. Solutions 2 and 3 to incorporate it in the current transformation efforts of our leaders. Solutions 4 and 5 for individual education and information campaign to enact legislations and encourage individual stewardship.
I believe that this is your personal passion so my challenge to you is to organize all the information of all government and NGO efforts, design and integrate an our overall campaign to get more people involved in making our global home work right. We have the web platform, social networks and mobile communications systems to accelerate this.
See if my suggestions as our key solution makes sense to you.
When questions are asked such as this, it can only mean that our world is waiting for a leader to lead us effectively and efficiently that when this question pops out, I can point to a leading NGO or government institution and I can say "yes we are actively solving this problem and we are on the right track!". With our great passion to right our world, we can start leading from anywhere and ignite our systems to make an impact.
Ben Jarvis 50+
what the problem needs is legal bans and serious enforcement of those bans. that being the case, it also tells us what individuals can do: lobby the government and vote to that end.
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Almost all of the oceans creatures depend on coast zone habitats for breeding. The coastal zones world wide are the nurseries for bio dviersity. So there's a lot indviduals and local communities can do to maintain healthy coastal zone areas and promote awareness of coastal zone and near shore areas.
Ben Jarvis 50+
to me small-scale 'solutions' like this aren't really solutions at all, in the same way that switching off lights won't solve an energy crisis.
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Part of their work involves an ongoing dialog with the fishing community here ( we are a very old fishing village and land the most lobster of any port on Maine) on conservation and cosatal management practices. Our lobster industry is pretty much already self governmed, self regulated under a set of rules on number of traps, lobster size and non taking of egg bearing females.
They also do public education and research. They have been trying to bring about Self governed, conservation based Bay Management and Coastal Zone management systems involving all the fisheries.
Their work engages individudal stewardship for our coastal waters through ongoing programs and education for citizens and for the fisheries.
http://www.penobscoteast.org/default.asp
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Thank you for bringing this important topic to TED Conversations
We included the following value in our TED Conversations poll of "Commin Ground Values" ( www.goo.gl/mod/0073). It currently ranks 13th out of 65 listed values with two opposing it as a value. ( hope everyone will go and vote and addanything important that dosn't see addressed there)
" "the earths oceans, its waters, its atmosphere belong to all peoples of the earth and to future generations.no nation has the right to compromise these common resources"
A complicated issue, especially atthe level of what we can do as individuals. Perhas th emost imporatnt thing we can do as individuals is think of our oceans as a global resource..think of ourselves as global citizens and then begin to act locally from that framework?
.
Paul van Zoggel
Can't campaign if I am eating crabsalad at the same time.
Further; Campaigning AGAINST something has never worked for the long run when it comes to nature/environment if there is no punishment for bad doing. Look at the huge campaigns against 0,5 liter cola plastic bottles and 0,2 liter yogurt cups. It only enhanced in the end the usage.
FOR something needs to be put well in place, educating children is the most obvious for me.
carole lyc
Poor sharks got their fins cut off just for human indulgence.
No consumption means no killing.
Ray Anon 10+
In that case there is an extremely simple solution: Become vegetarian or vegan. Eating butchered corpses is a highly disgusting matter for modern humans, and they want to repress this thought. This goes so far that many children in Germany don't even know that meat comes from dead animals! Their parents don't tell them because otherwise the kids might refuse to eat. But adults too avoid to see the exact circumstance of how you get the body parts and organs from the animal.
Nowadays it is really easy in Germany to live a vegetarian life, and even vegans can live without significant limitations. This was different ten to twenty years ago in regards to the range of products, the labeling and - a hurdle not to be underestimated - the prices. General vegetarianism or veganism would have massive effects on a wide variety of fields on a global scale. I think there is no other aspect in everyday life that has a comparable power on the environment. And we can only speculate about how profoundly it would affect the mindset of humans.
Now if the millions of people in your society are relentless and willing to pollute and exploit the resources, then you can hardly help it. But if they are just habitual and generally open for questioning their current way of life, you can incite a sustainable change if you do it right.
Roy Mulder
The only solution is for people to act locally and join local marine conservation initiatives.
Julie Ann 10+
It appears that you advocate some kind of activism by individuals, but that is not clear from your statement. Can you elaborate on your solution?
Julie Ann 10+
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Thanks for mentioning the U.N. Convention on the lawof the Sea.Here is a link
:http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_overview_convention.htmA rich resource and a very good introduction to some of the issues involved in global management of our oceans and protection of bio diversity.
And here is a wikipedia link to the definition of territorial waters.trwelve miles from shore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters
Julie Ann 10+
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
:>))