Types of Habitats

Coastal and marine areas contain some of the world's most diverse and productive systems. They include extensive areas of complex and specialized ecosystems, such as enclosed seas and tidal systems, estuaries, salt marshes, coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves that are sensitive to human activities, impacts and interventions.

 

Pressures on these systems are growing more intense. As rapid development and population growth continue in coastal areas, increasingly heavy demands will be placed on the natural resources and remaining natural habitats along the coasts. Some of the most important present and potential threats to marine and coastal biological diversity are alteration and loss of habitat, chemical pollution and eutrophication, global climate change, introduction of alien species, and over-exploitation of living marine and coastal resources. As a result some species are under threat of extinction.

 

Based on: Convention on Biodiversity: SBSTTA Recommendation I/8: Scientific, technical and technological aspects of the conservation and sustainable use of coastal and marine biological diversity