Today, Friday, the third United Nations Conference for the Ocean, which is hosted by the French city of Nice, will end to confront an exacerbated emergency that camping over the surroundings of the world, in light of the whitening of coral reefs, the collapse of fish stocks, and the records of the sea temperatures and the ocean.
The talks will be crowned with the adoption of a political declaration and the disclosure of the “Nice Oceanic Action Plan” that aims to keep pace with the size of the crisis and accelerate the work to maintain the oceans and its sustainable use.
“The ocean is facing an unprecedented crisis due to climate change, plastic pollution, loss of ecosystem, and excessive use of marine resources,” said Li Gouhua, UN Secretary -General for Economic and Social Affairs, who is also the Secretary -General of the conference.
Jehouwa expressed his hope that the conference would be inspiring to “unprecedented ambition, innovative partnerships, and possibly health competition,” stressing the need for international cooperation to avoid irreversible damages.
The conference gathered world leaders, scientists, activists and corporate managers to address the growing crisis in the world’s oceans, to launch voluntary pledges, sign formal treaties, and establish new partnerships, as well as enhance the necessary accountability in the field of combating maritime deterioration.
Coural warming and whitening
The oceans are facing imminent threats. In April, global sea surface temperatures reached the second highest level ever of that month, according to the European Climate Change Service.
The Caribbean Sea, the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific Ocean are witnessing the widest coral whitening phenomenon in the recorded history.
Coral reef houses a quarter of marine species and is mainly for billions of dollars generated by tourist activities and fisheries fading, and their collapse may be unleashed into successive effects on biological diversity, food security and the ability to adapt to climate change.
The damage extends to what is deeper than that, as the ocean still absorbs more than 90% of the extra heat resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, a function that may approach its maximum limits.
The Secretary -General of the Conference warned that “challenges such as plastic pollution, overfishing, loss of biological diversity, ocean acids, and global warming are all linked to climate change.”
Despite the challenges, there were some remarkable achievements. In 2022, the World Trade Organization concluded a comprehensive agreement to gradually get rid of harmful benefits that feed overfishing, giving a rare glimmer of multilateral torque.
The following year, after decades of stalemate, the countries adopted the Upper Seas Treaty to protect marine life in international waters. This agreement is now scheduled to enter into force at the Nice Summit, but the UN official has warned that the global response in this field is not sufficient.
Nevertheless, ocean protection is still suffering from a chronic deficiency in financing, as the target receives 14 of the sustainable development goals, which is “underwater life”, the lowest resources among the 17 sustainable development goals that member states agreed to achieve by 2030.
The United Nations estimates the cost of protecting marine ecosystems and restoring them over the next five years at about 175 billion dollars annually.
Nice Oceanic action plan
Experts believe that the topic of the conference, which is to accelerate the work and mobilize all actors to maintain the oceans and use them in a sustainable manner, reflects a shift from statements to implementation.
For 5 days, participants dealt with major issues, including how to stop unlawful fishing, reduce plastic pollution, and expand the scope of sustainable blue economies. Hundreds of new pledges are expected to be issued, to add to more than two thousand voluntary commitment that have been cut since the first ocean conference in 2017.
The Nice Action Plan is in line with the Kunming-Montreal global framework for biological diversity, an agreement concluded in 2022 and calls for the protection of at least 30% of marine and land environmental systems by 2030.
In addition to the new pledges, the plan will include an official advertisement, and Lee Gouhua described it as “a brief political document and the process of trend to address the interconnected crisis facing our oceans.”
“The Political Declaration project, which is led by Australia and Capo Verde, focuses on maintaining ocean -based oceans and economies, and includes concrete measures to accelerate work,” Lee Gouhua added.
The crisis with numbers and solutions
Up to 12 million metric tons of plastic to the ocean annually, equivalent to a garbage truck every minute. At the Nice Conference, the delegates hope to reach a global agreement to address plastic pollution from its source.
-More than 60% of the naval ecosystems are deteriorating or unnecessarily used. The conference aims to enhance efforts to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, and to launch a road map to remove carbon from maritime transport.
Global fish stocks fell within the safe biological borders from 90% in the 1970s to only 62% in 2021. The conference seeks to pave the way for a new international agreement on sustainable fish fisheries.
-More than 3 billion people depend on marine biological diversity in their livelihood. In response, the conference seeks to enhance the financing of blue economies and enhance societal solutions.
A decade after the signing of the historic Paris Agreement (2015), which set goals to reduce global warming, the Nice Conference seeks to place the ocean at the heart of climate work, not as a secondary idea, but as a front battleground to protect the ocean.