Comprehensive Ocean Management Plan Finally Happening
The Obama administration recently announced an initiative that is long overdue.
Overshadowed by all the screams and shouts over health care and stimulus plans, in June of this year the president set in motion the creation of a comprehensive ocean management plan to help define the challenges our Ocean environment faces, and hopefully develop sound, long range policies to turn things around.
Like most things political, the devil will most certainly be in the details, but it can only be a step in the right direction that this issue has reached the oval office and found a friendly ear.
Despite how vital our coastal and offshore areas are to the health of our planet, it has been maddening that Ocean policy has been a mish mash of piecemeal policy lacking any central theme, until now.
For the first time in history, the president of the United States has made the health of our Ocean a national priority.
When it comes to Ocean policy, the average American is usually unaware that the town they live in has a more coherent plan for growth and development than Uncle Sam has yet to adopt for the sea around us.
Hopefully, this sad reality will change with what Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the president's Council on Environmental Quality told the nation will include “a more balanced, productive, and sustainable approach to using. managing and conserving ocean resources."
Along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and a few dozen other agencies, a plan is in the works to finally identify the problems we face and develop solutions.
The primary objectives of the Ocean Policy Task Force will be to address
1. Ecosystem-based management as a foundational principle for comprehensive management of the Ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.
2. Coastal and marine spatial planning to resolve emerging conflicts to ensure that shipping lanes and wind, wave, and oil and gas energy development do not harm fisheries and water quality.
3. Improved coordination of policy development among federal state, tribal, local, and regional managers of Ocean, coasts, and the Great Lakes.
4. Policies that focus on resiliency and adaptation to climate change and ocean acidification.
5. Policies needed to deal with changing arctic conditions.
Conflicting reports on the task forces pending findings and recommendations are, of course, inevitable, along with all the other challenges any political review board faces, but at least a dialog has begun.
You can't solve a problem until you know what it is and at long last Mother Ocean is getting the attention she deserves.
