by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) June 14, 2012 World
governments have made little progress in the past 20 years when
it comes to their pledges to protect marine life and reduce
overfishing, experts said on Thursday. With ocean health among
the top 10 issues at the Rio 20 summit on sustainable
development June 20-22, international experts called for
concrete action to avoid "empty ocean commitments." Targets set
at UN summits in 1992 and 2002 have largely gone unmet, and
implementation "has been difficult, ineffective or practically
nonexistent," the authors wrote in the US journal Science.
Contributors came from the Zoological Society of London, Simon
Fraser University in Canada, the Pew Environment Group in the
United States, the University of British Columbia and the
University of Oxford. "Our analysis shows that almost every
commitment made by governments to protect the oceans has not
been achieved," said Jonathan Baillie, director of conservation
at ZSL. "If these international processes are to be taken