Evolving the narrative for protecting a rapidly changing ocean, post‐COVID‐19

The ocean is the linchpin supporting life on Earth, but it is in declining health due to an increasing footprint of human use and climate change. Despite notable successes in helping to protect the ocean, the scale of actions is simply not now meeting the overriding scale and nature of the ocean's problems that confront us. Moving into a post-COVID-19 world, new policy decisions will need to be made. Some, especially those developed prior to the pandemic, will require changes to their trajectories; others will emerge as a response to this global event. Reconnecting with nature, and specifically with the ocean, will take more than good intent and wishful thinking. Words, and how we express our connection to the ocean, clearly matter now more than ever before. The evolution of the ocean narrative, aimed at preserving and expanding options and opportunities for future generations and a healthier planet, is articulated around six themes: (1) all life is dependent on the ocean; (2) by harming the ocean, we harm ourselves; (3) by protecting the ocean, we protect ourselves; (4) humans, the ocean, biodiversity, and climate are inextricably linked; (5) ocean and climate action must be undertaken together; and (6) reversing ocean change needs action now. This narrative adopts a ‘One Health’ approach to protecting the ocean, addressing the whole Earth ocean system for better and more equitable social, cultural, economic, and environmental outcomes at its core. Speaking with one voice through a narrative that captures the latest science, concerns, and linkages to humanity is a precondition to action, by elevating humankind's understanding of our relationship with ‘planet Ocean’ and why it needs to become a central theme to everyone's lives. We have only one ocean, we must protect it, now. There is no ‘Ocean B’

Biotechnology for environmental quality: Closing the circles

This paper examines the impact of biotechnology for enhancing the quality of the environment, and the necessity of encouraging holistic approaches to environmental problem solving. Current actions are considered wanting because they place insufficient attention on the causes of environmental degradation. In this context, a number of issues and research agendas are presented, a consideration of which leads me to opine that urgent priorities for ensuring lasting sustainable development must include the widespread adoption of clean technology and ecosystem restoration. Biotechnology has a particularly decisive role to play in realizing clean processes and clean products, and this role is illustrated with reference to clean technology options in the industrial, agroforestry, food, raw materials, and minerals sectors. A quarter of a century ago Commoner (1971) used the metaphor of a closing circle to draw attention to incompatibilities of modern industrial society and ecological health. The second part of this paper argues that, as biotechnology has matured, a circle of synergistic flows of materials, services and ideas has been established between it and biodiversity and suggests a more optimistic scenario to that portrayed by Commoner. The closing of the biotechnology-biodiversity circle is manifest in the following terms: search and discovery; detection, circumscription and phylogeny; ecosystem function and restoration; industrial ecology; and the gearing provided by molecular biology. Finally, the North-South biotechnology-biodiversity circle presents critical problems of commercial exploitation and intellectual property rights in relation to the gene pools of the megadiversity but predominantly developing countries of the world