This year's European maritime day provides an important opportunity to take stock of the state of Europe's seas and oceans, and of the challenges and opportunities they face. Our oceans are among our most precious resources, providing us with nutritious food, recycling our oxygen and helping to keep our climate system in balance. They also offer significant economic opportunities, not just in well-established industries such as fisheries or transport, but also in newer sectors like offshore wind and wave energy generation or blue biotechnology, where innovation can help us meet new demands and sustainably develop available resources.
At the 'healthy oceans: productive ecosystems' (Hope) conference in March, environment commissioner Janez Potočnik was joined by 15 EU environment ministers, along with representatives from national administrations, the regional sea conventions, industry, academia and the NGO community, to discuss the marine environment as the basis for the sustainable development of the maritime economy. The declaration of Hope which emerged from these discussions calls for strong action to provide better environmental protection and urges political leaders to deliver on the EU goal to achieve 'good environmental status' for marine waters by 2020.
"Blue biotechnology may enable us to use marine biodiversity to develop new pharmaceuticals, bringing health benefits to patients and creating new, high-quality jobs"
We are now halfway between the adoption of this goal in 2008, under the landmark marine strategy framework directive, and the 2020 deadline. The outlook is mixed at best. Although we now know more than ever before about our seas and oceans, our knowledge is still fragmented, and our efforts at marine protection are still too focused on narrow, national approaches. It is vital in the steps ahead, when member states adopt marine monitoring programmes later this year and even more so when they adopt next year a list of concrete actions to undertake by 2020, that our efforts are aligned. Together, we can still ensure that our marine ecosystems are adequately protected.
This is all the more important because so many of the fruits of the 'blue economy' depend on a healthy marine environment. An overfished or polluted sea is not a resource that can deliver to its full potential. We must, therefore, be smart in harnessing the new technologies which are in many ways so promising for our future wellbeing. Innovations, for example, in blue biotechnology may enable us to use marine biodiversity to develop new pharmaceuticals, bringing health benefits to patients and creating new, high-quality jobs. However, this is only possible if the habitats these organisms populate are not destroyed by bottom trawling or badly planned offshore installations.
In addition, we must harness innovation, not only to exploit the resources of our marine environment, but also to understand it. For this reason, it is a cornerstone of the commission's policy on 'blue innovation' to ensure that relevant marine data is easily accessible, interoperable and free of restrictions on its use. In some cases, new technologies can address gaps in our knowledge, while more integrated data sharing can be cost-effective for achieving comprehensive monitoring of our marine environment.
New, resource efficient technologies can also help tackle environmental degradation; though the seafloor may offer resources which are difficult or expensive to mine on land, we should also ask whether better product design and new recycling methods could enable us to source these materials more cheaply from the millions of discarded products which currently end up in landfills.
By acting together, and harvesting the full potential of eco-innovation in the blue economy, we better equip ourselves to protect our marine environment and to ensure that it can remain healthy and productive for the generations to come.