Turkey, Neighbors Pledge to Clean Up Mediterranean

A baby turtle heads to sea on a beach in Mersin, southern Turkey, Aug. 7, 2020. (DHA Photo)
A baby turtle heads to sea on a beach in Mersin, southern Turkey, Aug. 7, 2020. (DHA Photo)
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Turkey, Neighbors Pledge to Clean Up Mediterranean

A baby turtle heads to sea on a beach in Mersin, southern Turkey, Aug. 7, 2020. (DHA Photo)
A baby turtle heads to sea on a beach in Mersin, southern Turkey, Aug. 7, 2020. (DHA Photo)

Turkey and its neighbors pledged Friday to do a better job addressing the threats posed by pollution to people's health and the natural habitats of the Mediterranean Sea.

From plastic waste to slimy mucilage forming on their coasts, the ring of tourism-dependent Mediterranean countries have battled a steady stream of environmental problems, raising the issue's importance in voters' eyes.

Responding to the tide of public unease, envoys from 21 regional states agreed at a four-day gathering that ended Friday on Turkey's southern coast to slash the use of sulphur in fuel for ships.

Their decision to reduce the sulphur content of the fuel to 0.1 percent from 0.5 percent in the Mediterranean will be submitted to the International Maritime Organization.

Once approved, the cap will come into force in January 2025.

"We expect that through the implementation of this decision, there will be an important reduction of pollution coming from ships," said Tatjana Hema, coordinator of the Mediterranean Action Plan at the United Nations Environment Program.

Mediterranean countries and the European Union hope the limit on sulphur use -- the culmination of five years of talks that could provide a template for other deals -- will ultimately save lives.

Besides hurting the sea, air pollution caused by smoke-chugging ships can be linked to 60,000 premature deaths a year globally, according to some expert estimates.

Hema told AFP any cut in sulphur would have positive "socioeconomic and health" effects by reducing hazardous emissions.

The EU led the effort to reduce sulphur content in fuel, said Patrick Child, deputy director general for the environment at the European Commission.

"It's one of the seas with the most challenging environmental biodiversity threats," he said, calling the agreement on sulphur oxides a "breakthrough".

But the list of increasingly urgent problems is long, putting pressure on regional governments.

The Mediterranean is "a hotspot for climate change", said Carlos Bravo, an ocean policy expert who works for the Swiss-based OceanCare advocacy group.

Other issues include ships colliding with marine mammals, Bravo said, since the sea is one of the most dense for shipping traffic.

Action was also needed to eliminate "bycatch", where turtles and sharks get trapped in commercial fishing nets, and to reduce noise pollution from ships that affects more than 150 species, Bravo said.

Turkey, which this year became the last G20 country to ratify the Paris climate agreement, has come under particularly heavy criticism for how it treats its water.

The issue gained international attention when a thick layer of slime dubbed "sea snot" covered Istanbul's southern shores on the Sea of Marmara last summer.

Scientists blamed the mucus on Turkey's failure to properly treat agricultural and industrial waste before it flows down rivers into the sea, whose unusual warmth creates ripe conditions for algae to grow out of control.

The sea snot has all been cleaned up, said Soner Olgun, laboratory, measurement and monitoring department chief at Turkey's environment ministry, adding he did not "expect it to return this year or next year".

Turkish officials now stress the imperative of eliminating all forms of waste -- particularly plastics -- to save the sea.

"It's not just related to marine litter, but also related to waste water treatment, as we saw in Istanbul with the mucilage," Mehmet Emin Birpinar, Turkey's deputy environment minister, told AFP.

Eighty percent of sea waste arrives from land, Birpinar said.

A Greek study in October said 3,760 tons of plastic waste were floating in the Mediterranean, whose littoral states stretch from North Africa to the Middle East and southwestern Europe.

One of the most poignant examples of the plastics' harm comes from the famous but endangered loggerhead turtles, whose babies hatch on Turkey's southern coast before crawling into the sea when they are ready.

They are carnivores but tend to confuse jellyfish for plastic bags, explained Yakup Kaska, head of the Sea Turtle Research, Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre based in Mugla, southwestern Turkey.

Kaska said rising sea temperatures also led to an increase in female turtles because heat determines the creatures' sex.

"We are getting nearly 90 percent of the hatchlings who are females. We need males," Kaska said.

"If one degree Celsius is the best scenario for the temperature increase, we may have all female hatchlings in 50 or 100 years."



Australia Sweats Through Hottest 12 Months on Record

Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching. DAVID GRAY / AFP/File
Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching. DAVID GRAY / AFP/File
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Australia Sweats Through Hottest 12 Months on Record

Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching. DAVID GRAY / AFP/File
Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching. DAVID GRAY / AFP/File

Australia has just sweltered through its hottest 12 months on record, a weather official said Thursday, a period of drenching floods, tropical cyclones and mass coral bleaching.

Senior government climatologist Simon Grainger said the rolling 12-month period between April 2024 and March 2025 was 1.61 degrees Celsius (34.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average -- the hottest since records began more than a century ago.

"This is certainly part of a sustained global pattern," he told AFP.

"We've been seeing temperatures since about April 2023 that were globally much warmer than anything we have seen in the global historical record."

The previous hottest period was in 2019, Grainger said, when temperatures were 1.51 degrees Celsius above average.

"That is a pretty significant difference," Grainger said.

"It's well above what we would expect just from uncertainties due to rounding. The difference is much larger than that."

The record was measured on a rolling 12-month basis -- rather than as a calendar year.

Australia has also recorded its hottest-ever March, Grainger said, with temperatures more than two degrees above what would normally be seen.

"There has basically been sustained warmth through pretty much all of Australia," he said.

"We saw a lot of heatwave conditions, particularly in Western Australia. And we didn't really see many periods of cool weather -- we didn't see many cold fronts come through."

Sickly white coral

From the arid outback to the tropical coast, swaths of Australia have been pummeled by wild weather in recent months.

Unusually warm waters in the Coral Sea stoked a tropical cyclone that pummeled densely populated seaside hamlets on the country's eastern coast in March.

Whole herds of cattle have drowned in vast inland floods still flowing across outback Queensland.

And a celebrated coral reef off Western Australia has turned a sickly shade of white as hotter seas fuel an unfolding mass bleaching event.

The average sea surface temperature around Australia was the "highest on record" in 2024, according to a recent study by Australian National University.

This record run looked to have continued throughout January and February, said Grainger.

"We haven't seen much cooling in sea surface temperatures."

Moisture collects in the atmosphere as oceans evaporate in hotter temperatures -- eventually leading to more intense downpours and storms.

Australia follows a slew of heat records that have been toppling across the planet.

Six major international datasets confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record.

Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming.

Australia sits on bulging deposits of coal, gas, metals and minerals, with mining and fossil fuels stoking decades of near-unbroken economic growth.

But it is increasingly suffering from more intense heatwaves, bushfires and drought, which scientists have linked to climate change.