20 measures for 2020

Seas at Risk, an umbrella organisation of environmental NGOs across Europe, have written a letter to Environment Ministers proposing 20 measures that are needed to implement the EU's environmental obligations, supported by 35 organisations. "Clean, healthy and abundant seas by 2020. This is what European countries committed to achieve when they adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive in 2008. With little more than a year until the deadline, all countries of the European Union are failing on their legal obligation to ‘take all necessary measures to achieve Good Environmental Status of EU seas by 2020’ (Marine Directive, Article 1(1)). In August, the European Commission itself stated that we are unlikely to achieve Good Environmental Status of EU seas by 2020 unless Member States take more definitive action." These 20 measures would stop the degradation of our seas and prevent serious impacts to nature and society. The are using the hashtag #OurBlueLung to highlight the issue because our seas and ocean produce over half of the oxygen we breathe.