A golden opportunity missed was how Monica Verbeek, fisheries policy officer for Seas at Risk, the international federation of marine environment groups, described the results of the first meeting of environment ministers from the North-East Atlantic region and the Baltic states.
The ministers representing the OSPAR (Oslo-Paris Commission for the Protection of the North-East Atlantic) and HELCOM (Helsinki Commission for the Protection of the Baltic Marine Environment) agreed to establish a network of marine protected areas by 2010 at a meeting in Bremen, Germany last month. However, crucially, they made no moves to protect those areas from shipping and fisheries, the two main threats to the European seas.
The environment ministers didn't attempt to curb commercial fishing either, in spite of the fact that 90 per cent of large predator fish have been removed from the world's oceans, and cod in the North Sea is on the verge of commercial extinction. Environmentalists will be hoping for more action at the forthcoming European Marine Strategy.
Check out www.seas-at-risk.org, www.helcom.fi and www.ospar.org.
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