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18 | OCEAN GOVERNANCE

Marco Lambertini
currently Special Envoy and former Director General of the
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF International), founding
member of the Pelagos initiative

What are the major challenges in managing the How is this area affected by the degradation of
Pelagos Sanctuary? the planet's ecology?
We didn't understand the importance of this marine The Pelagos area, like most of the Mediterranean
mammal hotspot until the 1990s. More than 20 years and the world's oceans, is affected by overfishing,
ago, Prince Rainier III was the visionary behind the which is detrimental to the entire ecosystem, inclu-
creation of the Pelagos Sanctuary, and the Prince Al- ding the marine mammals at the top of the food
bert II of Monaco Foundation was the catalyst for this chain. This is a long-term threat that must be tackled
highly ambitious vision, advocated by the Member to ensure the sustainability of the fishing industry it-
States: the protection of a large and economical- self and food security. By protecting, regulating, and
ly important marine area, which comprises several encouraging sustainable practices, we can reverse
marine protected areas. A major challenge for each the trend, as witnessed with bluefin tuna populations
country is the coordination and establishment of in the Mediterranean.
rules to govern the pressures linked to human acti-
vities which impact the ecosystem. It is then neces- Among the many sources of pollution affecting the
sary to ensure the application of these regulations Pelagos area, oil and plastic pollution are particularly
and to tackle the global problems which affect this threatening for marine mammals and turtles, as plas-
Mediterranean sanctuary. tic is mistaken for food. Trillions of plastic fragments
We are moving in the right direction, but we need are already floating in the Mediterranean.
to accelerate our progress towards the global objec-
tives of carbon neutrality and nature positivity. Another major problem is, of course, global war-
ming, which is leading to rising sea temperatures
What are the latest developments in terms of and causing acidification and deoxygenation of the
sanctuary regulations? waters. This is yet another reason to speed up the
An encouraging development is the European reduction of emissions and the protection of natural
Union's regulation of driftnets, which are one of the carbon sinks (ocean ecosystems absorb ¼ of human
main threats to marine mammals and turtles. CO emissions).
2
Concerning the risk of collision with marine mammals
there is currently a project to regulate the speed of
maritime traffic in the sanctuary (which accounts for
almost ¼ of the world's maritime traffic), particularly
that of cruise ships.