Introduction:
Marine Environment & Coastal Zones
Most
pressures affecting the policy field
Marine
Environment & Coastal Zones
are imposed by growing urbanisation and by all economic sectors, in particular
tourism, transport, industry, energy, agriculture and fishing.
The
indicators presented in this section aim to provide an overview of those
pressures with a particularly harmful impact on the environment, as selected by
the Scientific Advisory Groups:
- eutrophication,
as a result of the use of fertilisers in agriculture,
- overfishing,
- development
along shore, both linked to urbanisation and tourism,
- discharges
of heavy metals and halogenated organic compounds and,
- oil
pollution along the coast and at open sea, which is attributable to both the
transport and energy transformation sectors.
Some
of the problems affecting the marine environment and coastal zones directly or
indirectly are treated in other chapters such as
Loss
of Biodiversity (
e.g.,
wetland loss),
Waste
(hazardous or landfilled) or
Water
Pollution & Water Resources
(water quality in general).
The
Fifth Environmental Action Programme has set several targets for the year 2000
under its various themes and sectors. Some of these are rather general and aim,
for instance, at better co-ordination between relevant existing policies at EU,
national and regional levels, and integrated planning and management of coastal
zones; others call for more concrete actions such as the creation of a coherent
European network of protected sites (oriented towards the Protection of Nature
and Biodiversity but which also concerns Coastal Zones), and the prevention and
reduction of pollution of fresh surface water which can affect the quality of
bathing water when entering the sea.
The
Ministerial Conference of the North Sea countries in 1995 decided to stop
emissions, discharges and all losses of harmful substances to sea area by the
year 2020. In 1998, both commissions for the protection the North Sea (OSPAR)
and the Baltic Sea (HELCOM ) committed themselves to the same objective.
