How can such a small country make the difference?

Blog post by Ana Mafalda Cabral

At the edge of Europe, a small country faces the challenges of Climate Change. Portugal is a Southern European country with a 943 Kilometers coastline, which makes Ocean pollution an extremely relevant matter. Frederico Morais, also Known as Kikas, a Portuguese pro surfer dedicates his time to explain to the Portuguese population how this affects his day-to-day.

With a great career comes great responsibility

In January of 1992, a little boy was born. He grew up in a small town near the ocean, Cascais, with his siblings and parents. His family was very active and sports were always part of their routine. He was introduced to surf pretty early in his life. He would wake up very early in the morning, every day, so he could surf before classes. His dad used to drive him to practice and the greatest conversations they had always started there.
It was late, around 7 P.m., Kikas was playing with a pen he hold in his hands when he finally answered the question of the interviewer. He said something along the lines of: by having the career he has and by having the influence he has, the responsibility he faces in terms of making people aware of their contribution for ocean damage is enormous.
Sometime after this interview, Morais became an Ocean Leader, from a Oceanário de Lisboa iniciative.
He stood there, with this new challenge in his hands, thinking of what he could do to better the Portuguese influence in marine life destruction.
If we had to choose only one action to take in relation to the ocean pollution, we could all agree that awareness would take the podium. The biggest threats to the oceans are, according to the World Economic Forum, climate change, pollution, overfishing, the lack of protected areas and subsidies that support illegal fishing. In fact, climate change has caused the average water temperature to rise and consequently, the oceans have become more acidic. Acidification results in an oxygen deficit, which makes breathing difficult for marine animals. Pollution, essentially from plastic, is also a determining factor, says the International Union for the Protection of Nature, that around 300 million tons of garbage are produced annually, and that at least eight of these tons end up in oceans. Likewise, overfishing, which as the name implies is the abundant fishing of endangered species for sale, ends up leading to an increase in endangered species. In this sense, the fact that many subsidies support illegal fishing, that is, unauthorized fishing of endangered species, also contributes to ocean deterioration. Finally, protected areas are essential in combating the degradation of life at sea, giving a legal burden to sustainability, but only 2% of the oceans are currently protected, falling short of what is desirable.
Pay attention to the problem of plastic. According to data from Our World in Data, around 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land, with China being the country that dumps the most waste in the ocean, followed by Indonesia and India. What happens is that the garbage is not properly treated, ending up being dumped in rivers, such as the Yangtze, in China, or the Ganges, in India. Rivers flow into the oceans, and carry millions of tons of plastic with them. This plastic will be ingested by marine animals, will destroy coral life, and create entire islands.
Regarding illegal fishing and sale, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) discloses that large markets, such as the United States, import around five billion kilograms of fish, without presenting any type of legislation regarding how they were fish. Note that Portugal is not, partly because of its size, the biggest threat to the oceans. However, each country, whatever its social and economic impact, has a duty to do what is necessary to make the Common House a better place. Between 2013 and 2020, Portugal followed a strategy “that encompasses the various sectorial and transversal public policies and actions, proposing a sustainable development model based on promoting the economy of the sea. In a logic of integrated maritime policy, it assumes as guiding principles the integrated management, precaution and the effective participation of all, with a process in place to identify inequalities between women and men in the different sectors of the maritime economy. Thus, the planning of the maritime space, the surveillance of human activities at sea and environmental monitoring are fundamental axes of this policy”. (National report on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2017, p. 68)
Portugal does not have enough economic power to alone achieve all the goals of the objective, however, the country has made much progress in this direction and counts on partnerships between member states. As an example, Portugal made a commitment, before the UN, to host and organize the second United Nations Conference on the Oceans, which should have taken place in 2020. Let us also consider the Oceano Azul Foundation, which aims to raise awareness the community, so that in the long run, people have the knowledge they need to make more informed choices. Finally, Jerónimo Martins assumed the responsibility of carrying out a three-year assessment, in order to have greater control over the impact that its activity has on ecosystems.
I believe that Portugal, as a European country with the greatest relationship with the oceans, be it economic, cultural and/or historical, has an extremely relevant role in people’s education. This means that, more than creating start-ups that produce water cleaning machines, or even developing bills for the protection of coastal areas, Portugal should take advantage of its history to bring, to its own and to the rest of the world, information about the oceans and the necessary care.

If you are interested in this topic and feel that you haven’t done enough, you are not alone. But remember that everyone has a chance at a new beginning and yours is now. If you want to educate yourself, you can find links to further readings all about this juicy topic.