The United Nations has marked World Environment Day by calling for the creation of ocean parks to protect depleted fish stocks. "There's not a lot of reason for celebration," UN Environment Programme (UNEP) chief Klaus Toepfer said in Barcelona of the state of the planet.
UNEP's bleak slogan for June 5 is "Wanted! Seas and Oceans: Dead or Alive?".
A group of children released two turtles, nursed back from injuries from fishermen's nets, into the Mediterranean from a Barcelona beach. From Australia to Zambia, activists tried to clean beaches, promote renewable energy or plant trees.
"Society can no longer view the world's oceans as a convenient dumping ground for our waste, or as an unlimited source of plenty," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a call for urgent action.
He noted that governments agreed at an Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 to try to restore depleted fish stocks by 2015 and to set up more protected marine areas, like wildlife parks on land, by 2012.
"This last goal...is especially important," he said in a statement. "Less than 0.5 percent of marine habitats are protected - compared with 11.5 percent of global land area."
