UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 26 April 2008 -- For 60 years the Cousteau family has been part of the greatest exploration of the ocean in all of history. His recent films include Return to the Amazon, aired earlier this month on PBS in the USA, and the IMAX Dolphins and Whales 3D documentary, currently exhibited in Germany and acclaimed as the most successful release ever for a 3D documentary film in the country. Advancing his family's legacy, the mission of Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society is “to explore our global ocean, inspiring and educating people throughout the world to act responsibly for its protection, documenting the critical connection between humanity and nature, and celebrating the ocean's vital importance to the survival of all life on our planet.”

Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: Jean-Michel, you have been diving into issues of water, literally since birth, and are perhaps today one of the longest first-hand witnesses of the global environmental crisis. What is your perspective on the planet’s water resources after a life-long pursuit of its mysteries?

Jean-Michel Cousteau: My father pushed me overboard when I was 7 years of age with a tank on my back. I was able to explore the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea at that time, and very quickly I realized that my own playground was being trashed. Essentially, a lot of debris was being dumped into the Mediterranean Sea and the runoff from the coastline was carrying all sorts of foreign objects. And that was only what I saw: obviously, we do not see chemicals and heavy metals.

This has been going on and on since then, and although thanks to my father we have been trying to alert the public, very little progress has been made. As the population of the world is increasing, the pressure on the oceans is increasing, and we are little by little destroying our life-support system. We really need to become aware of the consequences of our mismanagement, and I think through education and better understanding we can change that. And now, with the extraordinary communication systems that are available to us, we can make that happen. Time is of the essence but I am still hopeful that ultimately we will be able to reverse the trend and allow nature to do what it does best: take care of us and the other species on the planet.

M.W.-S.: What is in your opinion the gravest water-related challenge that we face at this point in time?

J.-M.C.: The greatest water-related challenge I think is the fact that we have taken water for granted, whereas it is in fact a precious commodity which has certain limits. Also, there are about 5,000 children who die from water-related issues everyday, due to polluted water or to the fact that they do not have enough water or any water at all.  It is caused by our mismanagement, because there is enough water for every human being. It is an issue of distribution and the challenge is to make sure that we provide those who do not have the same privilege as we do with water which is available, and particularly to educate ourselves not to spoil and waste it like we do all the time. I think we are becoming more aware of that and hopefully, we will be able to help those who do not have water.

M.W-S.: In its search for supplying freshwater, a basic vital need, to millions of people worldwide, more and more local authorities are turning towards desalination plants, which treat ocean saltwater to make it proper for consumption and irrigation. What are your views about this new trend?

J.-M.C.: Desalination is one of the answers. But probably not the only one. I think we can save a lot of money by providing water in a more sustainable way. It can be done – it is not like it is impossible.

M.W-S.: Climate change is on everyone’s agenda these days, and the impacts of climate change are significantly related to water, through the melting of glaciers, storms, rising sea levels, among others. Can the oceans be a part of the solution in this climate change crisis, rather than a threat to lives and livelihoods?

I don’t know that we can say that the oceans can be a solution.

The consequences of climate change are going to be very dramatic, in the sense that there will be hundreds of millions of people displaced, and maybe as much as a billion people, who will have to move and go somewhere else. The infrastructure to care for those people does not exist today. And it will happen in a very short period of time, a few decades. So I really think that we need to focus on those issues and at the same time, try to eliminate or diminish emissions of CO2, which is the cause of the climate change and particularly the melting of the ice, the increase of the water-level, and the increase of the energy that you find in the weather-system: hurricanes, tsunamis, storms of any kind. Those are unavoidable. Life in 20, 30, 50 years from now will not be the same as it is now; it will be a different kind of life. And we better get prepared for this and at the same time, temper the impact that we have by settling somewhere, which is acceptable to nature.

Now, for those who are still sceptic: what we are doing is that we are accelerating the process. The fact that there is what has been commonly called “global warming” has always happened in the history of the planet. But it happens over thousands of years, it doesn’t happen over decades. And the reason why it happened so fast is because of our emissions of CO2, which contribute to that acceleration.  

M.W-S.: The environmental movement is arguably some fifty years old, and yet, to most observers, it seems that the problems only get worst. From the standpoint of the planet’s oceans and water systems, have we made any progress at all?

J.-M.C.: We are certainly making a lot of progress right now. What was happening fifty years ago was mostly emotional. There was a sense of “something is going wrong”. Today, thanks to the scientific community and all of the research that has been conducted, we know some of the causes and can identify some of the origins of the problems, whether it is the emissions of CO2 or the acidification of the ocean – words which we never pronounced 10 years ago; “acidification”, not even pronounced 2 years ago. So it is all recent, and we are now in a position where we can roll up our sleeves and go to work. These are no longer just concerns, they are facts and we are starting to know what needs to be done.

M.W-S.: What are the priorities?

J.-M.C.: The priority is to focus on our energy consumption. Some of the energy needs to be changed; some of it needs to be decreased. And we need to take advantage of the free energy which is provided by nature whether it is the wind, the sun, the currents in the ocean (they are like the wind in the air), and the difference in temperature between the deep water and the shallow water.

M.W-S.: What is in the works at the Ocean Futures Society?

J.-M.C.: The focus of Ocean Futures Society is essentially three-fold:

1)   Mass provider of information – essentially, TV and the internet (more and more so)

2)   Education: through our Ambassador Program, our Sustainable Reef Program, which anybody can consult on our website

3)   Reaching people’s hearts and diplomacy: and that is not only through lectures, books and articles but also for me to sit down with decision-makers in the industries and in government anywhere on the planet, and reach out to the hearts – for people to understand that we are there to cooperate and help in any way that we can. And when that is felt and understood, the brain starts to make the right decisions.

In terms of specific projects, we are preparing our next expedition, which will compare the Master of the Ocean with the Master of the Land, that is, compare orcas (editor’s note: killer whales) with humans. Orcas like humans are everywhere from the Arctic to the Antarctic, their world is twice as big as ours, and we are polluting their world – they are not polluting ours.

M.W-S.: As many of us are wrapped up in the daily race and loose touch with the natural world, can you leave us with an inspiring image of the exceptional beauty of the underwater world?

J.-M.C.: There is nothing more extraordinary than to feel like an astronaut by being underwater where you are weightless. You can be upside down if you feel like it, pursue the all time human dream of flying – the big difference being that you do not have to fight gravity because you are weightless. You can fly and swim like a bird or like a fish in the giant forests of kelp. It is an extraordinary feeling. And instantly, when you have that experience, you want to do something about protecting it. If you protect the ocean, you protect yourself.

About Ocean Futures Society

Ocean Futures Society (OFS) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. With the motto, “Protect the ocean and you protect yourself,” the mission of OFS is to explore our global ocean, inspiring and educating people throughout the world to act responsibly for its protection, documenting the critical connection between humanity and nature, and celebrating the ocean's vital importance to the survival of all life on our planet. OFS is based in Santa Barbara, California, with offices in Paris, Lucca, Italy, and Sao Paolo, Brazil. For more information, visit www.oceanfutures.org .

Labels: United Nations, U.N., MaximsNews WATER, water, marine environment, water news, water sustainability, water resource, water management, global water crisis, sustainable development, ocean, climate change, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Ocean Futures Society, Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya

 

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