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  • Biodiversity Action Plan Report
  • Biodiversity Baseline report
  • Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators
  • State of the Environment Report
  • The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
 

Folder Marine

 

The marine territory covers 70% of earth surface and more than 50% of the territory of the EU. Europes land is surrounded by five sea basins: the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, North Sea, and the North Atlantic Ocean.

Marine ecosystems are diverse: some are highly productive and all are important ecologically and economically to humankind. They provide numerous vital goods and services like food and chemicals and play crucial roles in biogeochemical processes sustaining the entire biosphere. Although the marine realm has less species than the terrestrial it has a greater phylogenetic diversity than land faunas and floras.

The main pressures on marine ecosystems are pollution, overexploitation of marine resource, climate change and acidification, sea uses and the introduction and spread of invasive alian species. The conservation assessment of marine habitats and species carried out in the context of the Habitats Directive showed that the overwhelming majority of features had to be assessed as ‘unknown’. Only for 2% of marine species and for 10% of marine habitats the conservation status assessments are witin the category ‘favourable conservation status’.

Compared to the terrestrial environment, there are serious delays in identifying marine areas needing protection and even greater delays in establishing their management. Under the EU Habitats and Birds Directive about 2000 sites had been proposed or classified, which are either fully or partly marine. Currently most of these sites are near-shore areas, whereas offshore areas are currently lacking. The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive specifies inter alia the designation of Marine Protected Areas as a means for Europe’s seas to achive ‘good environmental status’.

 

Further reading:

 

Selected links:

European Atlas of the Seas

EC Maritime affairs

EC Marine and Coasts

OSPAR Convention North East Atlantic Sea

HELCOM Helsinki Convention Baltic Sea

Barcelona Convention Mediterranean Sea

Bucharest Convention Black Sea

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)

WISE - Water quality in transitional, marine and coastal waters