Plastics also emerged as a major threat to ocean health. An estimated 52.1 million metric tons of plastic waste is produced every year. Much of it is discharged into the ocean each year, hard to recover, and impacting thousands of marine species.
Oceans cover 70% of the planet, and play a central role in regulating the climate. Yet increased environmental impacts come while much of the ocean remains unknown to us—only 27% of the ocean floor is mapped, and deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood, the report notes.
“Little of the vulnerability of marine biodiversity, species genetics, and microbial communities, particularly in the deep sea, to climate change and emerging economic activities is understood,” the report says.
However, climate change has already had a devastating impact on species habitats, particularly along coastlines, according to the report. Coral reefs, for example, are passing their planetary tipping point, a threshold that, once crossed, leads to large, accelerating, and often irreversible changes.
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