International experts submit report on Future of the Seas and Oceans to G7 Science and Technology Ministers meeting in Japan

The report, which was prepared by an expert group coordinated by our member the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) via its the International Association of Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) of the International Council for Science (ICSU), focuses on seven critical marine research issues.

They are plastic pollution of the marine environment, deep-sea mining, ocean acidification, ocean warming, de-oxygenation, biodiversity loss, marine ecosystem degradation.

The report came in response to concern expressed by the G7 Science ministers on these issues at their meeting in Berlin last year. There was a direct call to international scientific community in the 2015 Communique “to understand the ocean as a whole through international scientific cooperation” (p. 6).

At a meeting in Nairobi last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that that it will commission three special reports in the coming years, one of which will cover the oceans and the cryosphere.