The tendency to use the ocean as a dumping ground is not new. However, with increased industrialization both the quantity and quality of what is dumped has altered for the worse.

Half the world’s population lives in cities and 40 percent of humans live within 100km of the sea shoreline. From this location many economic benefits accrue: Ocean navigation and trade, coastal fisheries, tourism and recreation. And of course a useful access to a waste dump, the sea itself.

According to Don Hinrichsen, writing a report for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, underlining the crisis of our coasts is the threat of increasing population and its ever-increasing needs.

“If coastal demographics are alarming now, they are downright scary by 2025,” he wrote. “Already nearly two-thirds of humanity — some 3.6 billion people — crowd along a coastline, or live with 150 km of one. Within three decades, if trends continue, 75 percent of humanity, or 6.4 billion, will reside in coastal areas, nearly a billion more people than the current global population.”

As population density has increased, so have the pressures on the coastal ecosystems and the marine environment. Habitat conversion, land cover change, increase in pollutants both domestic and industrial lead to loss of biodiversity, coral reef bleaching, new diseases among littoral and reef dwelling organisms, hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, silting, reduced water quality and threats to human health through accumulated toxins in fish and shellfish and pathogens such as cholera and hepatitis ‘A’ living in polluted water.

With a concentration of fertilizers in run-off water from farming activity comes eutrophication, an increase in the concentration of chemical nutrients in the ecosystem of coastal waters to such an extent that, when the phytoplankton and zooplankton die, they cause a drop of oxygen level in the water and subsequent death of many species of marine dweller. The algal bloom commonly known as the ‘red tide’ is one example. The green bloom and accumulation of seaweed strands on the shore of Jeddah’s Al Hamra Beach is another.

Sewage from urban areas is a major source of the pollution that is discharged into the sea. In the case of urban Jeddah, despite the efforts of local authorities, it still reaches the seashore. Even if the effluent is treated to remove solids, the liquid discharged contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus that act as nutrients for microscopic algae and zooplankton.

Less obvious but as significant are the exhaust fumes from vehicles and industrial chimneys which are significant sources of nitrogen compounds that are transported in the atmosphere and deposited in coastal waters.

Globally, the run-off from agriculture is the main source of eutrophication but atmospheric deposition is the fastest growing source. In the case of the coastal cities of the Kingdom, agricultural run-off is minimal, and the two main sources are incompletely treated sewage and atmospheric deposition from industrial areas.

Apart from eutrophication is the physical settling of sewage on the seabed and coral reefs that border the Red Sea near Jeddah. Near large sewage outfall pipes in south Jeddah the polyps that are the living part of the coral have been wiped out leaving only calcareous skeletons behind. Layers of silt have literally suffocated them.

Importantly, their death removes a base element of the marine food chain. With the polyps gone, polyp-feeding fish leave too, removing the next link in the food chain and the knock on effect along that chain results in a reduction, and finally elimination, of a local fishing industry.

There are 600,000 square km of coral reefs throughout the world’s tropical seas. These species-rich ecosystems are also suffering widespread decline.

Clive Wilkinson, a coral reef specialist working at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and quoted by Hinrichsen, has estimated that 10 percent of the world’s reefs have already been degraded “beyond recognition”. Thirty percent are in critical condition and will be lost completely in 10-20 years, while another 30 percent are threatened and will disappear within 20-40 years. Only 30 percent of the world’s reefs are thought to be in stable condition, those removed from inhabited areas or otherwise too remote to be exploited.

The pressures of population, urban and industrial development have been increasing in the world’s coastal areas for decades. They have triggered widespread degradation of marine resources in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and parts of Latin America particularly in the over-exploitation of inshore fishing.

“Nearly all Asian waters within 15 km of land are considered over-fished,” observes Ed Gomez, Director of the Marine Science Institute at the University of the Philippines in Manila.

With its relatively small size, limited oceanographic circulation and high number of endemic species, the Red Sea is particularly vulnerable to pollution, loss of species, and reduction in the productivity ecosystem. The key environmental threats, according to a US-based university backed research organization EOE, are unregulated fishing, uncontrolled development and oil pollution.

“The World Bank/GEF/PERGSA Strategic Action Programme (SAP) for the Red Sea aims to improve coastal and marine environments by reducing navigation risks, and preventing and controlling maritime pollution. The LME’s (Large Marine Ecosystem) extensive coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangroves suffer from the excesses of tourism, pollution discharges and industrial development. There is a need to establish more marine protected areas, to serve as havens for fish and for repopulation purposes.”

Dumping waste into the sea, damaging the marine environment in any way will have, in the fullness of time, an effect on populations that live near the coast. Stopping the use of the sea as an open sewer will involve several approaches from public education. It will certainly require the policy and legislative structure but above all it will need enforcement. In the area of policy, Saudi Arabia has long had the framework in place.

In 1992 Saudi Arabia adopted the Basic Law — commonly referred to as the Kingdom’s constitution — which sets out the system of government for the country, and the obligations of the government to the people. Article 32 of the Basic Law states: “The state works for the preservation, protection, and improvement of the environment, and for the prevention of pollution.”

Clearly the basis of the law has been established and the legal basis for implementation is there. Saudi Arabia is also a signatory to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, which provides for a universal legal framework for the rational management of marine resources, and their conservation for future generations.

Following on that, an environmental regulation was enacted by Royal Decree No. M/34 on Oct. 16, 2001, and was published in the Official Gazette number 3868 November 9 2001.

It aimed to create a general regulatory framework for the development and enforcement of environmental rules and regulations. The regulation assigned to the Meteorology and Environmental Protection Administration (MEPA), the general responsibility for creating a regulatory framework for the development and enforcement of environmental rules and regulations.

The new regulation “anticipates that MEPA will coordinate with other government agencies regarding the development and enforcement of environmental standards, and that MEPA, together with any other relevant government agency, will have the power to impose penalties for violations of any applicable environmental standards, where there are no such penalties already in place.”

It seems that, triggered by the disastrous floods in Jeddah in late 2009, enforcement of the ample regulations has been initiated. However, this is not the conclusion of a process of protection. It is the beginning of a new stage in the realization that the culture of “out of sight out of mind” has come to an end. Perhaps a realization that humans are an integral part of the environment, rather than simply users of it, has come to bear fruit.