Ambassador Peter Thomson, UNSG’s Special Envoy for the Ocean said that the course set on Friday at the Commonwealth Ocean Ministers Meeting in Cyprus “must prove true” and should help reverse the decline in the ocean’s health and deliver us the universal resilience promised by a truly Sustainable Blue Economy and an ocean of peace.
Addressing the meeting, he said with 49 of its 56 member countries bordering or surrounded by the ocean, it is only logical that the Commonwealth should play a leading role in global efforts to implement SDG14, to engage with the UN Decade of Ocean Science, and be at the forefront of developments in the Sustainable Blue Economy. He also said that the successful outcomes from deliberations on the proposed Commonwealth Ocean Declaration, will set the course for its adoption at CHOGM in Samoa at the end of October.
Thomson said “while we can, we must take every preventative measure available to us. From source to sea, from innovation to conservation, from stopping pollution to new
ways of funding, from curbing global warming to transitioning rapidly away from fossil fuels, we must protect coral reefs as if our future security depends upon them, for it probably does”.
In the best interests of marine biodiversity, Thomson said “we must undertake international fast-tracking of 30 by 30 (a worldwide initiative for governments to designate 30% of Earth’s land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030).
“We have only seven years to achieve our ambition, thus we should set ourselves now to finding consensus on what parts of the ocean we can agree to set aside for protection. The forthcoming CBD COP16 in Colombia provides a timely opportunity to set that process in motion”, he remarked.
On the rising sea levels, he said “the news we’re receiving on the rate of temperature rise and consequent melting of the cryosphere of both the Arctic and Antarctica, is cause for growing alarm and international attention. There is only one ocean, so what happens at the planet’s poles has direct consequence
s for sea level rise in tropical areas”.
He remarked that with the Sea Level Rise Summit occurring in New York on 25 September this year, “we have the perfect opportunity to enact an action-oriented political declaration that recognises the perpetual nature of existing EEZ boundaries”.
He further noted “we aspire to conclude a truly robust Plastics Treaty, one that will bring an end to plastic’s pollution of the ocean” while we “continue to strive towards ending the harmful subsidies given to the fisheries sector”.
Thomson said that “it is now well accepted that new sources of funding are required if we are going to realise the essential benefits of the Sustainable Blue Economy”.
Speaking as a grandfather and on behalf of his grandchildren, he said he refuses to stand by while their lives are consigned to the horror of an unlivable world in the form of desperate climate refugees, the devastation of droughts, storms and floods, rampant wildfires, and ecologically destructive marine heatwaves.
“And so, in
the name of intergenerational justice, we must seize the opportunities to enact that refusal. One such opportunity is today’s meeting in Cyprus, and what it leads to at CHOGM in Samoa, and from there on to the UN Ocean Conference in Nice in June next year. These are opportunities to unlock the ocean’s many ways of carrying us to the safe harbours we seek”.
Thus he added, “the course we set today must prove true. It must be a course that will help reverse the decline in the ocean’s health and deliver us the universal resilience promised by a truly Sustainable Blue Economy and an ocean of peace”.
Source: Cyprus News Agency