Speech at National Press Club in Washington D.C.

Today, 50 per cent of the world's population live within 5 miles of the sea. In Cairo we focused on the fact that the number of people may double some time in the next century, and on why our efforts to stabilize population growth are vital. We focused on migration, poverty and equity, but not on the most important migration trend which will take place during the next generation: By the year 2030, 70 per cent of a nearly doubled world population will live within the said five miles of the coasts.

In Asia alone, one billion people rely on fish as their main source of protein. Sixteen per cent of all animal protein consumed comes from the seas. Increasingly, the oceans will become the prime hinterland of growing coastal populations. But even the vast oceans are vulnerable to our extravagances, as sea levels rise as a result of global warming, - as sewage and landbased pollution make their impacts, - and even nuclear pollution enter the currents, affecting us all.

Unless we are cautious and precautious, our growing numbers will subject the oceans to demands which they cannot meet. A growing population will require increasing quantities of fish and other marine foods. For the sake of tomorrow's billions, we must ensure that we do not use the same sea from which we harvest our food as a dump and a sewer. Sea transportation will have to be reconciled with other uses of the sea and subjected to stringent security requirements. Accidents have had and may have devastating effects, given the complexity and value of competing interests.

This is why today I will speak primarily about marine sustainable development and about why the oceans must be better understood and better managed. Since the first Earth Day 25 years ago, our knowledge has been greatly expanded. We have learnt about the ozone shield, we speak with confidence about global warming, and we know the cause and effect of acid rain, - all which were largely hidden problems only a generation ago.

Now we must become equally fluent in the threat of overfishing, - learn to understand new concepts such as straddling stocks, - the subject of the latest dispute between Canada and the European Union, - and begin to look at the sea as a potential source of great future prosperity and well-being, but also as a source of knowledge yet to be acquired.

The oceans provide the balance in the Earth's wheel of life. Covering over 70 per cent of the planet's surface, they play a critical role in maintaining life support systems, but their secrets have for centuries been shrouded in mystery.

This is an infra-red satellite picture of the Gulf Stream.

It was unknown to the Vikings of Norway and Iceland when they sailed across the North Atlantic to settle in Newfoundland 500 years before Columbus. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin studied the Gulf Stream and found that a vessel could sail faster from Europe to North America by avoiding it and that a thermometer could be used to determine its edge. Today we can watch the Gulf Stream like this on a computer screen, and can study currents, waves, salinity, and radioactivity, almost in real time.

The importance of marine sustainable development will increase exponentially as we rely more heavily on our oceans for food and environmental security. We must realize in time that the current ocean management system is in a shameful condition given our growing needs and limits to the yield that the oceans can provide.

The history of ocean management is replete with curious and bizarre rules and decisions, such as when the pope divided the Atlantic between Spain and Portugal, or when the British Navigation Act required foreign vessels to be the first to signal when they met the Union Jack on the open sea. Ocean management tended to reflect the prevailing sea power, as when Norway was told some 90 years ago that its assertion of a four-mile territorial limit was viewed as a casus belli by Her Majesty's Government.

We share the oceans between us, but we cannot share them out among us. Ocean boundaries exist on maps only. Each country tries to manage its land resources, regulate agriculture, limit pesticide use and prevent overuse of fertilizers. By comparison, our oceans are largely unmanaged. Our international agreements and conventions have been developed piecemeal. They reflect a time of much cruder knowledge. They do not effectively prevent abusive practices such as overharvesting of resources, irresponsible sea transport, or clandestine dumping.

Regrettably, today's ocean management system is loop-holed and unable to safeguard against major ecological breakdowns. - Or would we today have accepted as adequate rules that would permit the total collapse of fish stocks off the coast of Newfoundland or the Gulf of Maine?

Loop-hole-fishing in the Doughnut Hole in the Bering Sea and elsewhere is using a right to obtain a wrong. It is the marine equivalent of a corporate takeover, stripping the assets for short-term profit.

It is estimated that the global long term sustainable yield of commercial fishing as we know it will be limited to some 100 million tons. The capacity of the world's fishing fleet is about twice this. We have tremendously increased our capacity for fishing, but have neglected to develop the necessary management capacity. Clearly the fisheries need regulations. We cannot treat the oceans as if they were a forest abundant in game with a free-for-all.

Fisheries management rely on science. Allowable catches must be based on scientific knowledge. The various species must be seen in relation to each other, as the growth of one stock may lead to the decline of another. We must study competition for food between the various species and how one species preys on another, and how this may affect the whole marine food chain.

We learnt this the hard way in Norway when the cod stock collapsed about ten years ago. Only by setting very strict quotas for fishing - against very loud outcries, - and basing the quotas on the best available scientific evidence were we able to restore the stock, which is now one of the few commercially important stocks in the world in a healthy condition.

Naturally, regulation is only effective if there is adequate control and enforcement. It is unlikely that countries will provide effective inspection of their distant water fishing fleets, so the coastal state is normally the one which has the greatest interest in the marine resources and the capacity to police.

But even the most prudent and scientifically based fisheries management can not increase yields enough to meet rising demands. Much of the future lies in fish farming, which may increase yields immensely. In 1992, the global supply of fish was 110 million tons. 98 million tons came from conventional fishing and 12 million from aquaculture. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that, in order to meet global needs, fish-farming yields should be increased by 50 - 100 per cent by the year 2010.

Some people argue that fish-farming is not sustainable since the fish feed on nutrients already available to people. But fish are twice as efficient as cattle at converting plant tissue to animal protein, - apart from being far better for our own health.

But can we rely on aquaculture? Nature is truly bountiful, but also capricious and at times unmerciful. Salt-water aquaculture will be vulnerable to hurricanes, waves action, pollution and harmful alga blooms, which may cause loss of gear and harvest, and even bankruptcy within a matter of hours. No wonder that some of the keenest interest in raising safety and early warning standards and all in all to increase predictability in aquaculture has been shown by the insurance industry.

A few years ago, we were able to detect the spread of a major bloom of toxic alga in Norway at an early stage enabling many owners to tow their fish-farms away from the threat, saving assets worth millions.

Today, monitoring buoys are used to detect algae, and various types of chemical pollutants, and the information can be transmitted via satellite in time for preventive action to be taken. If aquaculture is to occupy the place many foresee in the food production of tomorrow, we are dependent on such technology for banks to take the financing risks and for insurance premiums to remain affordable.

Some developing countries, such as Thailand and Indonesia have realized this in time and have procured state-of-the-art marine monitoring equipment which will allow them to leapfrog many stages in the development of their maritime economies.

A satellite and buoy based marine monitoring system developed in Norway by means of government research-and-development funds is now rated so highly by the Navy Department here in the US, that it seems unlikely if the US now will develop competing technology. Had such equipment been installed off Alaska at the time of Exxon Valdez, and had pollution equipment been readily available, there would have been time and opportunity to channel the oil spill into specially designated harbors, avoiding devastation of the shoreline and the massacre of the sea-birds.

Moreover, had today's digital nautical maps been in use in combination with positioning and autopilot systems, Exxon Valdez and a series of other major pollution incidents could have been completely avoided.

As it turned out, Exxon may have to pay indemnification and cleaning costs for the 45,000 tons of spilled oil equivalent to the price of 45,000 tons of silver.

Many countries have been reluctant to provide funding for research into this kind of technology, asserting that if there is a market, the means will materialize. But the flaw in such reasoning is that private money is unlikely to be forthcoming to protect the public interest such as fishing villages, rich estuarine ecosystems, the wildlife and - future generations.

The opposition to funding such environmentally important marine research and development is unwise. Is it better to avoid paying a few dollars in taxes to fund critical research programs, and instead to pay much higher insurance premiums as insurance companies pass their losses on to the consumer? If the answer is yes, ideology really becomes expensive.

There now exists a series of databases and environmental monitoring systems making use of very advanced technology. We need aggressive environmental research policies which can improve what we have and enhance our capacity for immediate assessment.

Still, a lot of critical environmental data can still only be collected by taking samples. The presence in water and animal tissue of the poisonous persistent organic pollutants such as PCBs and DDT are still hidden from remote sensing. But we are becoming increasingly aware of the problems, as when PCBs are found in ice bears thousands of miles away from industrial areas where they are produced.

Persistent organic pollutants have been shown to cause serious dysfunctions when entering the human body or wildlife. These pollutants are released to the environment from diffuse sources including manufacturing leaks and combustion. The bulk of these releases sooner or later end up in the marine environment, and once dispersed, clean-up is impossible.

This is why we should welcome what is known as the "Washington process". The aim is to establish a panel much like the one on climate change to study the problems that in time could lead to a global convention on phase out of dangerous compounds, as we have seen happen with CFCs as a result of the milestone Montreal Protocol.

As our increasing knowledge of ocean management clearly indicates, environmental problems are becoming more complex. New generations of international environmental agreements must be dynamic, scientifically based and constructed to take account of the international nature of the issues. They must be equitable in the sense that industrialized countries must take on a major responsibility, but also developing countries must shoulder their part of the burdensharing.

Moreover, agreements must take account of the differing costs of cutting pollution. By means of example, it costs ten times more to cut SO2-emissions in Norway, which already has done a lot, than in Poland which have had time to do less.

Our economies are expanding so fast that conventional sampling and research cannot keep pace. When Margaret Thatcher finally acted on the acid rain problem, it was only after she received what she finally had to accept as evidence of the problem, years after the lakes and forests of Scandinavia had been severely degraded.

Today we can watch live how the various environmental problems evolve, by means of sensors and satellite technology, via information highways.

"A sea of data - a drop of information". This is how the Norwegian- based affiliate of UNEP's GRID system described the need for responsible processing and assessment. GRID stands for the Global Resource Information Database. Our GRID Centre is one of ten around the world working to bridge the gap between the scientific understanding of earth processes and environmental management at the national or international level.

In June, our GRID centre will present the first complete national state of the environment report to be available on Internet, and Norway is proud to be first in this respect.

By means of GRID, we are also able to assist the new democracies in the East, such as the Baltic countries to monitor their environment, for example the marine pollution in the Baltic Sea. Such information is available quickly and free of charge to countries such as the Baltic states. It helps to accelerate the openness and transparency of environmental information in countries who used to cover up facts that could be unpleasant to face.

Such new information networks and highways, connecting countries which we used to put into the categories of East and West, are the successor generation information systems to the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe, as they provide information important to people's lives. Today, these information systems are also important in accelerating the technological development and capacity building in the new democracies.

The GRID system also helps us to track the marine environment in the High North, where radioactive contamination is a major threat which because of the direction of the sea currents not only affects the littoral states but also Canada and the US.

Access to this new technology is critical. Countries with adequate monitoring and policing capacity might be able to defend the interests of their populations, but many of the poorest coastal states are only now starting to devise a management regime and their knowledge of their immediate environment is often only superficial.

Equity in technological opportunities is still a far way down the lane, but there is good news on the horizon. It appears that a huge body of knowledge about the state of the environment is available and affordable for most countries.

We are able to monitor the global environmental impact of the dynamic growth which takes place in an internationalized economy.

Transnational corporations are now frequently much larger than many independent states in terms of employees and resources. There is also a shift in economic power away from governments, international institutions and even federal banks to anonymous processes, stockmarkets and branches of industry where important decisions are taken by executives whose prime responsibility is the quarterly balance sheet and not the long-term environmental effect of company decisions. The speed and magnitude of these processes threaten to outpace the capacity of the public sector to adapt the workings of politics to new realities.

Perhaps the best insurance against environmentally irresponsible practices is the dissemination of knowledge and its means of acquisition. More transparent societies will help to unveil critical information which may be decisive for precautionary action.

There is a growing need to focus on knowledge as the ultimate resource and as an engine of growth and change. It is not natural resources in themselves that give us wealth, but the way we utilize them. If resources alone could make us wealthy, we could have reached our present standard of living millions of years ago. Waterfalls, for example, did not become a source of general wealth until Benjamin Franklin helped us understand electricity, until Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, and until the Norwegian engineer Sam Eyde developed the large-scale industrial use of electricity. Similarly, oil yielded little prosperity until Henry Ford found new ways to make use of it.

These developments were major steps forward in the history of mankind, and they fundamentally changed our daily lives. The best prospects for our future seem to lie in the inexhaustible potential of the human mind. Although investment in physical capital may yield decreasing returns, there is no reason to believe that investment in new knowledge is subject to such limitations.

On the contrary, the fact that recent technological breakthroughs have coincided with general access to education suggests that we may only have seen the beginning of technological change. Progress and breakthroughs are furthermore a hallmark of societies where the flow of information is free.

General technological development stagnated under communism, where even Xerox machines were subject to strict control and where access to computer technology was a prerogative of party conformists. Now we have seen the new republican leadership entertaining the idea of giving poor children a lap-top to allow them to educate themselves for å better future.

Knowledge is truly an infinite resource. There should be more than enough for everybody. But if we dont secure fair and equal access to it, it may constitute the new dividing line in our societies. Knowledge in the wider sense cannot in practice become the exclusive property of any company or individual despite efforts to maintain secrecy and patents. Individual knowledge will always spread and become common knowledge. Still, it has been at times of important political change that knowledge as a common good has expanded most widely.

The GI Bill passed in the United States after World War II gave hundreds of thousands of soldiers the opportunity to return to society by acquiring a college education they could not otherwise have afforded. The analyst Peter Drucker describes the GI Bill as one of the most important single political moves of this century and points to the enormous economic growth in the USA in the decades that followed.

The vice-president's GLOBE initiative should be seen in a similar light - training young people to think about how their immediate environment interacts with the outside world, and to communicate with youth around the world as the most natural thing in life.

"A sea of data - a drop of information". In the final instance, what matters is how we act on our new knowledge. We must face the brutal fact that some of the first enthusiasm has vanished from the environmental debate post Rio.

Must the fish stocks off North America be decimated before we can instill responsibility in fishing nations?

Must a dozen dumped nuclear reactors be found off the north coast of Russia before we improve nuclear safety measures?

Must we have to watch live the spread of the Sahara desert on satellite pictures before we understand that the climate is under threat and that we cannot afford yet another unsuccessful climate conference?

Will the millions migrating to the shores of the ocean, which I mentioned at the outset, have to turn back because the sea level is rising?

Will bold steps have to await an environmental CNN factor before we can rally the democratic support needed for changing policies?

There has been widespread concern that the forces of technology, finance and electronic communications might take over the power which was vested in democracy to shape our future, turning our global village into a global jungle. Technology in the service of the public interest, as I have described here today, may rectify such a course.

Technology is about equity. Technological advances and new knowledge in the North will only provide partial solutions unless technology is also disseminated to the Third World. The Third World can hardly become a reliable new market for high-tech products if the knowledge base is too thin. The future for developing countries lies in educating rather than arming their populations. This is primarily a responsibility for each individual country. As the Prime Minister of India said; "No great industrialist is going to come and look after the primary health centers of my country. No multinational company is going to run our primary schools."

According to the WorldWatch Institute, 90 per cent of the history of life on earth took place in the oceans. And the future for life on earth will most probably be more dependent on them than we realize today. Look at Indonesia: the fourth largest country on earth in terms of population, and an island state. Look at a demographic map of China and its crowded coastline. Knowledge of the oceans will become a major asset when we strive to achieve a balance between our numbers and what this earth can be required to yield. There is so much still uncharted sea for our insatiable human minds.