On a recent trip to Abu Dhabi, I could spend a few morning hours observing the still waters of the Persian Gulf at close range. At that early time of the day, only a gentle breeze ruffles the surface and the colours of water, sky and surrounding desert seem to melt into one, a pale green canvas. Looking at the beautiful seascape, I was reminded of earlier conversations with Yasuwo Fukuyo, a marine scientist at the University of Tokyo and an invaluable member of UNITAR's faculty in the 'Sea and Human Security Series'*1. He had told me that deep basins with a shallow mouth allowing little sunlight, lack of dissolved oxygen, high water turbidity due to desert silt and other pollution, could result at times in fish mass mortality. To this natural complexity must be added the environmental and military threats hovering over a key strategic passage for oil. In short, the Persian Gulf, like many other major bodies of water on our planet today, is highly complex, and particularly vulnerable due to human activity.

I was born near the Gulf and even though my family left long before I could forge any memories of it, I continue to consider myself 'maritime' in a cultural sense. Like many others I find inspiration in water's presence -- be that of the Leman lake in Switzerland, where I spent most of my young adult life, the Otemachi River in Hiroshima, where I now live or the powerful Pacific Ocean in California, where my family resides. Attachment to water seems to be a trait quite commonly shared, perhaps a reflection of a universal understanding of its importance to life as we know it. To get a sense of this it is enough to spend a Sunday afternoon on the beaches near San Diego where an assembly as colourful and diverse as the United Nations General Assembly frequently meets the eye: Indian families with mothers in saris, groups of Japanese and Korean tourists, lively Hispanic youngsters, golden California beach girls ? people of all ages and nationalities walking the sands, looking out to sea. The love of water recognizes no boundaries. As Mohamed Tangi, former Moroccan ambassador to Japan remarked*2, all religions and societies encourage the faithful to care for their seas and oceans, admonishing those who waste these precious resources. On the walls of the International Maritime Organization in London, he wrote, is the tapestry on which is woven a verse from the Koran - 'Vessels will travel peacefully over its waves'.

This idyllic picture is, of course, flawed.  For one thing, climate change looms large.  Today the crisis is recognized widely, as witness the change of perceptions regarding oceanfront real estate: once highly coveted, it is now deemed an increasingly risky investment. On a global scale, extreme climatic events are also becoming more frequent, with hurricanes, typhoons, floods and record heat waves.  Clearly, something is changing.

The depletion of marine resources, whether due to over-fishing, pollution or indeed climate change, too, is a significant threat. We have so taken for granted, and for so long, that the waters of the planet will continue to feed us generously and unconditionally that the mere thought of this cheap and accessible source of sustenance actually collapsing is hard to contemplate. We remain however insensitive to the obtuseness and brutality of our own mode of utilizing it: frequently treated as a dumping ground, we dispatch trawlers to vacuum ocean floors and set sail to factory ships that kill, maim and discard massive quantities of fish with no apparent reason or restraint. We have extended to the seas our mode of being on land ? constantly focusing on the 'more' and the 'bigger'- even as it becomes clear that this is ultimately unsustainable.

So how, one is tempted to ask, are we ever to achieve sustainable management of our seas? Thankfully, there are some pieces of good news: a global movement is on the rise among scientists, conservationists and practitioners, towards a more comprehensive approach to manage ocean resources ? a realization that the problems of climate change, over-fishing and the safety of food, pollution, eroding coastal zones, high-sea transport, piracy are all fundamentally intertwined. Where communities in many parts of the world have joined forces, fish stocks have revived, for example in parts of the Western Atlantic and in the North Sea. Eco-labelling for marine products, too, will almost certainly prove beneficial ? just as organic and sustainable farming has gradually influenced land resource management in recent decades, so would a similar sustained approach to marine food potentially transform the relationship of consumers with the seas. Countries are also starting to learn from one another's particular successes and failures. Japan, in which society is deeply related to fishery, has some impressive examples of efforts to save fishing communities: in one case in Hokkaido, a project for the re-plantation of a 'forest for fish' has revived both the declining local community of fish and the forests. Different solutions as part of one comprehensive approach to solving the problems of our oceans ? this is an important first step and our institutions are gradually grasping it. Now they must move faster, to action.

But cultivating our own sense of awe and the sacred in the face of the oceans and taking personal initiative, too, is essential. Mahatma Gandhi said that the world has enough resources to supply everyone's need, but not everyone's greed. Reflecting on the way forward, it is clear that key premises must be reconsidered - i.e. what, precisely, do we mean by sustainable? And where and how does this apply to our own mode of life? Each of us has power to make change. In the long run sustainable use of ocean resources may be as much influenced by our choices in the quality and quantity of fish we consume as by addressing inconsistencies of national and international policies that serve not the long term interests of man (or fish) but the short term profits of the few. We may not get everything right overnight, but it is imperative to act and it is helpful to start where it is easiest, with the self. To Gandhi again: 'Be the change you want to see in others'.

Edward Wilson of Harvard University, considered a founding father of our current understanding of biodiversity, wrote thus of the blue whale -- and his rendition I believe applies to much of our natural world: '… there are many values, destined to grow along with our knowledge of living Balanoptera musculus, in science, medicine, aesthetics, in dimensions and magnitudes still unforeseen. What was the value of the blue whale in A.D. 1000? Close to zero. What will be its value in A.D. 3000? Essentially limitless, plus the gratitude of the generation then alive to those who in their wisdom saved the whale from extinction.'*3

*1 An annual executive training programme, conducted in Hiroshima, Japan.
 (http://www.unitar.org/home/)
*2 'Sea and Human Security', proceedings of conference organized by UNITAR, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 2002
*3 In Richard Ellis, 'The Empty Ocean', Island Press, 2003 (pp 253-4)