Industry
Larger populations tend to have proportionally higher demands on their surrounding environment than smaller settlements. Coastal cities will naturally turn to the oceans to fulfil some of their demands, be it in the form of energy, food, water supply (desalination), transportation, sewage disposal, waste disposal, and so on. Industry is the route via which many of these demands can be met on a large scale; the scale required by megacities for example.
Photo courtesy of Topham, UNEP
Industry, as we know, is flawed in its ability to be nonwasteful. Some industries have greater effects on the marine world than others, but for the majority, waste is an unavoidable aside to providing a product or service to human populations. The global economic impact of marine contamination, in terms of human disease and ill health, may be running at nearly US$ 13 billion, so action is needed.
Large human populations rely on industry. They also rely on ocean resources. Maintaining the fine line where both can co- exist is difficult and we are currently failing, to the detriment of the health of our oceans. However the true value, economically, nutritionally, as an energy source etc, has only recently been realised. Plans are already underway in many regions of the world to reduce ocean pollution.
We have to hope that
- the action is in time,
- industry realises and excepts that the ocean world is a precious resource and
- governments uphold their duty to keep the oceans a viable resource and healthy biome for future generations by instating marine environmental laws and then enforcing them.