资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

In the early 1970s, the Mediterranean Sea was in dire straits.

Factories were leaching toxic chemicals into its fragile waters. Oil spills were blanketing its shores. And cities were flooding it with so much raw sewage, beachgoers risked exposure to infectious disease.

The pollution was so severe that many worried the Mediterranean, which had supported human civilization for 4,000 years, was dying.

“Once a symbol of the seas’ benefits to man, [the Mediterranean] became a symbol of man’s destructive impact on the seas," wrote  Mostafa Tolba, the former head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in his memoir.

By 1975, Tolba and others at a newly formed UNEP had decided that the only way to save the sea was through an international treaty involving its nearly two dozen coastal states.

A year later, and despite what were in many cases deep political tensions, 13 countries signed the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea Against Pollution.

Over time, States would restrict ships from dumping chemical-filled ballast water; protect endangered animals, like turtles and monk seals; establish emergency response plans for oil spills, and push coastal cities to treat their sewage.

The Barcelona Convention and the wider Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) would come to be the foundation of UNEP’s Regional Seas Programme, which today oversees 18 international accords designed to protect coastal and deep-sea habitats. Stretching from the Arctic to the South Pacific, those treaties involve nearly 150 countries.

While the world’s seas continue to face tremendous pressure from pollution, overfishing and, increasingly, climate change, the Regional Seas Programme is considered a bulwark against their collapse.

“For a long time, the ocean and seas were seen as these places that were far removed from the human world and as such became a dumping ground for waste, including hazardous substances,” said Nancy Soi, the coordinator of UNEP’s Regional Seas Programme. “That has since changed with the sustained call for action through the Regional Seas Programme.”