Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO
http://unhq-appspub-01.un.org/LIB/DHLRefWeblog.nsf/dx/31072009103719AMSLKK6W.htm
Despite progress achieved, regulation of the high seas or trans-zonal fisheries remains a major challenge. There is an increasing concern that many fisheries practices are unsustainable and that global fisheries face a major crisis. Many
special habitats are threatened by unsustainable uses, especially in the coastal environment. Mangroves, estuaries, coral reefs and seamounts harbouring hot spots of marine biodiversity are under threat. The illegal traffic of people, arms and drugs is increasing.
These alarming trends led the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 to agree to maintain the oceans under permanent review by establishing a regular process to conduct global and integrated assessments of the state of the ocean. The report we are submitting to you through the present letter (see annex) responds to this mandate and to United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/30, in which the Assembly invited our two organizations to lead in the start-up phase of this process. Later this year, an Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole will consider this report and propose recommendations on a course of action to the Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. We hope that a positive endorsement will pave the way for the first global, fully integrated assessment of the world’s oceans and seas, to be
conducted under the United Nations system by 2013-2014, which coincides with the planned date for the next consideration of the world’s oceans and seas by the Commission on Sustainable Development and the twentieth anniversary of the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
