A Dow Jones for the ocean
What’s the state of the world’s waters? Two years and tons of calculations from now, one number will tell the story.
It’s no big secret that the condition of the world’s oceans, seas, and their ecosystems is deteriorating. Our waters are being overfished and polluted. Sea temperatures and levels are rising. Habitats and healthy coral reefs are shrinking. Microbial diseases are spreading faster. And the ocean is growing more acidic. That’s just a start, and the far-reaching effects hurt everything from polar bears to local economies.
Reports describing our oceans’ decline appear almost daily in the media or in scientific literature. The problem is that, for the general public, it’s difficult to sift through all that piecemeal information and fully grasp the big picture. And for the community of marine scientists, conservation groups, and seemingly endless number of agencies and committees that manage ocean activities (there are some 70 bodies at the federal level alone) there’s no large-scale monitoring system that evaluates progress, or lack of it.
Enter the Ocean Health Index. On Wall Street, we have watched the Dow Jones Industrial Average for 103 years as one gauge of the health of the American economy. The Dow tracks the financial performance of its component companies, but also reveals broader trends in overall economic vigor. Now it’s time to create a Dow Jones of sorts for the ocean, because we have some serious investing to do.
The Ocean Health Index, currently being developed by scientists (including myself) at the New England Aquarium, Conservation International, and the National Geographic Society, along with other leading marine experts and analysts around the world, will be launched in 2011 and provide a comprehensive yet clear measuring stick on the state of our waters. Although there are other indices formulated by various groups that provide a report card on the earth (the Environmental Performance Index, for example), the OHI will be the first index that focuses solely on the oceans.
Calculated annually, the index will comprise about 40 measures, which are being selected and weighted to represent the most critical factors affecting ocean health, including overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, and invasive plant and animal species. The final score will be on a scale from 1 to 100. The OHI will evaluate the oceans’ status at the global level but also report on regional coastal areas that offer enough test data, such as the Gulf of Maine or the Mediterranean Sea.
The overall OHI score will resemble the grade-point average on a report card, but there will also be scores in those 40 measurement categories relative to performance goals established by the index team, and they’ll be mapped and color-coded so people can understand which areas are particularly troublesome and which reflect progress. Those numbers will be similar to grades for individual classes and should assist agencies and councils at the international, federal, and local levels to assess whether any actions taken to address harmful trends are producing results. Over time, the numbers will, in turn, enable the public to determine whether these ocean managers are fulfilling their responsibilities, and whether society’s investment in ocean health is paying dividends.
The comparison with the Dow has its limits. But even from a business perspective alone, what’s at stake is simply enormous: In one study, the total economic value of the oceans and their ecosystems was estimated at $21 trillion -- and that was back in 1997.
The oceans, which cover more than 70 percent of the planet, existed several billion years before humans, but their well-being depends on us, and vice versa. Fortunately, we’re at the beginning of a revolution in the way we use and watch over this resource. Proponents of an approach known as ecosystem-based management (EBM) are drawing followers. EBM takes into account the environmental, social, and economic facets of all human uses of the ocean and their real-life impacts on people and communities all together -- as opposed to the current approach in which different issues such as pollution, tourism, fisheries, and coastal development are examined separately and without adequate coordination.
By clearly pointing at priorities and providing a more explicit sense of shared purpose, the Ocean Health Index can help this vast collection of administrators, researchers, and advocates in business and conservation collaborate more effectively, with huge potential benefits for both the ocean and human well-being.
Steven Katona, the former president of the College of the Atlantic, is an adjunct senior scientist at the New England Aquarium. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. 