Improving Governance of the World’s Oceans

Among the many threats posed by sea-level rise is the potential impact of this phenomen on the extent of the maritime jurisdictional claims of coastal States. This paper provides a brief discussion of sea-level rise, before examining ways in which the maritime claims of coastal States may be impacted by rising sea levels. In particular, the traditional dependence on normal low-water baselines as the usual starting point for measuring maritime claims is problematic given the likely retreat of normal baselines inland as sealevels rise. This paper discusses options to address these challenges and outlines issues arising from the potential total inundation of a given State’s territory.

The Arctic Ocean has witnessed dramatic thinning and melting of sea ice cover as a consequence of climate change in recent years. This has led to increasing access to and thus activities in the Arctic region, including with regard to shipping. Arctic navigational opportunities are examined and it is concluded that there are a number of major obstacles to Arctic routes transforming the pathways of global trade, at least in the immediate future. The likely future opening up of Arctic sea lanes does, however, provide a focal point for increasing external interest in the region and for changes in oceans governance.

International environmental law has developed in a mostly sectoral and ad hoc manner. Regimes have been devised to address specific global or regional environmental problems, such as particular sources and types of transboundary pollution, rather than to promote transboundary environmental governance in a holistic and integrated manner. As a consequence there is today an array of international environmental regimes but a lack of coordination among them, and many regimes operate independently, and sometimes even inconsistently, in relation to each another.

There is now a general consensus that global warming is real and that one of the factors forcing climate change is the anthropogenic addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The implications of climate change for ecosystems are, however, not yet entirely understood. As the oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface and play a major role in the global carbon cycle, it is important to understand how a changing climate will affect the biota not only of terrestrial systems, but also of the marine environment.

The adverse impacts of anthropogenically induced climate change on the terrestrial and marine environments have been acknowledged by a succession of expert reports commissioned by global and national bodies.1 This recognition has prompted a variety of marine geo-engineering schemes to mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change on the environment including enhanced schemes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using the world’s oceans.

Eels are particularly vulnerable to persistent and bioaccumulable pollutants because they have an high content of fats, are univoltine and being benthic, can live for long time - during their growth phase in European fresh and brackish waters - in direct contact with the bottom environment, that in certain cases may be very polluted.

This study aimed to assess the contamination of coastal waters around São Paulo integrating bioaccumulation and histopathological analyses in the brown mussel Perna perna. For this purpose, organisms were transplanted from a farmed area (Cocanha) to two different zones (São Sebastião Channel and Santos Bay) for three months of exposure.

The effects of two Se diets (HSe 1.0 mg kg-1 and LSe 0.25 mg kg-1) were investigated on growth, accumulation and antioxidant response in juveniles of Cyprinus carpio at 0, 30 and 60 days. HSe carp had slightly higher mean weight (W) values than LSe group at 60 days and the Fulton condition factor (K) indicated good fish health for both diet groups.

The use of biomarkers has become attractive and useful for monitoring environmental quality and health of fish inhabiting polluted ecosystems. Among them, plasmatic biochemical parameters could be a promissory indicator of fish health condition. The question that arises is if these parameters can be applied to chronic toxicity. In this study we investigated the use of plasmatic biochemical parameters as indicators of fish chronic exposure to metals.

The benefits of adopting a management approach are widely reported and significantly accepted by many leading industrial companies and organizations. Towards this direction, many ports currently seek to respond timely to the new global trend: the integration of the environmental protection and sustainable principles into a port authority’s daily operation.

The object of this paper is to present and describe the efforts of the port of Piraeus to transform itself to a port with an integrated environmental management system. The port has set in the core of its environmental efforts the realization of the vision of a high standards port, both in economic and environmental performance, respecting in parallel its employees, port users and neighbours.

Organochlorine pollutants are ubiquitous and persistent anthropogenic contaminants in the aquatic environment. Since these compounds have an affinity for particulate matter, they can accumulate in sediments and due to their lipophilic nature they tend to accumulate also in organisms. In this study, sediment and mussel samples from the stanbul Strait were analyzed for indicator and 12 dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), 17 dioxins/furans congeners and for organochlorine pesticides (OCs).

The quality of coastal sea waters downstream of a major mixed sulphide mining and milling industrial facility located in North-Aegean Sea of Greece was examined. The factors influencing the quality of coastal waters are the natural mineralization, the remains of past mining activities, the washout phenomena following precipitation events and the discharge of the treated mine waters.

Polycyclic aromatic hyrocarbons (PAH), which are a large group of organic compounds with two or more fused rings, are an important threat to the environment. They occur in the aquatic environment as the result of oil spills, ship traffic, pyrolytic processes, domestic and industrial wastewater discharges.

The present investigation aims to treat the deep sea water using the polymeric resins synthesized in the laboratory. The resin was characterized with IR analysis and the morphology was discussed with SEM images. Further, the resin was distributed in three different bead sizes i.e., 0.25 mm, 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm as to assess their removal efficiency for the boron.