The Samoan government has enacted a law establishing a plan to sustainably manage 100% of its ocean by 2030. The plan creates nine new marine protected areas that cover 30% of Samoa’s ocean, an area roughly the size of Taiwan. The MPAs mean that Samoa meets its 2020 agreement to protect 30% of Earth’s land and ocean by 2030. They ban activities that harm marine life or habitats, including fishing, mining, and drilling.
The new E.U. Coastline Macro Litter Trend report has found that the amount of marine macro litter in the E.U. coastline has dropped by 29% between 2015-2016 and 2020-2021. While the largest reduction in terms of percentages is seen at the Baltic Sea (45%), major efforts at the Mediterranean and the Black Sea have led to impressive reductions in the absolute amount of litter on European beaches. This achievement is the result of multilateral, national, regional, and citizen efforts triggered by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
The South Pacific French territory has imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone – a rare and sweeping move that places it among the most restrictive in the world on seabed extraction. The law blocks all commercial exploration, prospecting, and mining of mineral resources within New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone – an area of over 500,000 square miles. New Caledonia is considered a global hotspot for marine biodiversity. Its waters are home to nearly one-third of the world’s remaining pristine coral reefs.
After years of negotiations, the international community has reached a landmark deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping, setting mandatory fuel standards and introducing a carbon pricing mechanism. The framework – agreed during a meeting of the U.N. International Maritime Organization – aims for net-zero emissions from the sector by 2050 and will come into force in 2027. It will apply to large ocean-going vessels over 5,000 gross tonnage, which account for 85% of carbon emissions from the marine shipping fleet.
A new study suggests that Australia has effectively implemented plastic pollution policies, including container deposit schemes and bans on single-use plastics. The study, based on 1,907 surveys conducted across six metropolitan regions, suggests that such policies, combined with local clean-up campaigns and public education, are reducing the volume of plastic entering the environment. Australia has pledged to phase out problematic and unnecessary plastics by 2025 and recycle or reuse all of its plastic waste by 2040.
Jurors have found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling wells, and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh. The case was the first of dozens of pending lawsuits to reach trial in Louisiana against the world’s leading oil companies for their role in accelerating land loss along the state’s rapidly disappearing coast.
Endangered Caribbean reef sharks and other shark species are making a striking recovery in Belize after plummeting due to overfishing between 2009 and 2019, according to recent observations. Experts say the establishment of no-shark-fishing zones around Belize’s three atolls in 2021 is what enabled the population boom. These shark-safe havens were made possible by remarkable cooperation and synergy among shark fishers, marine scientists, and management authorities.
Over 50,000 pounds of trash have been removed from the Arctic in 2023 alone after a multilateral effort flooded critical northern ecosystems with volunteers. Working during the brief Arctic summer, clean-up operations were carried out in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, and Iceland. Nearly 2,000 volunteers were enlisted across the treaty nations of the Arctic Council, an inter-governmental panel on peaceful and sustainable use and protection of the Arctic zone formed by the nations that pierce its frozen bordersand the Indigenous peoples that call it home.
The Marshall Islands government has announced it will protect an area of the Pacific Ocean described as one of the most “remote, pristine” marine ecosystems on Earth. The 18,500-square-mile marine sanctuary covers two of the country’s northernmost uninhabited atolls and the surrounding deep sea, and it is the first federal marine protected area (MPA) established by the Pacific Island nation. Fishing and other extractive activities will now be strictly forbidden, future-proofing the area against threats and formalizing protections.
A law banning imports of plastic waste came into force in Thailand, after years of campaigning by activists. Thailand is one of several south-east Asian countries that has historically been paid to receive plastic waste from developed nations. Thai customs officials said more than 1.1 million tons of plastic scraps were imported between 2018 and 2021. Imports of plastic were often mismanaged, with many factories burning the waste rather than recycling it, leading to damage to human health and the environment.
