May 2011: The most recent issue of Marine News, the newsletter of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Marine and Polar Programme, features an editorial by David Freestone and Kristina Gjerde on “High Seas on the Road to Rio+20,” as well as articles on Arctic hotspots, climate change mitigation and adaptation, ocean acidification, the first satellite-tagged western grey whale and marine protected areas (MPAs).

In the editorial on High Seas, Freestone and Gjerde note that the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) provides an opportunity to look at the “unfinished business” of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by indicating the way forward on the implementation of existing laws and reform of the global marine environmental governance framework.

The newsletter highlights a workshop convened by IUCN and the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) on identifying ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs) in the Arctic, as well as the recommendation by the newly established Working Group on Coastal “Blue Carbon” on halting the loss of coastal high-carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes, to slow the effects of climate change. The article on ocean acidification features the efforts of the Ocean Acidification User Group, of which IUCN is a party, to increase awareness of a new information guide for policy advisers and decision makers.

The newsletter also features “Flex,” the first satellite-tagged western gray whale, who has been tracked by biologists seeking to understand the migration routes of this population of whales. Finally, it discusses IUCN’s collaboration with MPA managers in the Mediterranean. [Publication: Marine News, Issue 8]