Flotilla of ocean advocates, researchers arrives in Nice for UN conference
A flotilla of boats operated by activists and researchers paraded off the coast of Nice on Sunday, June 8, as the southern city geared up to host the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3).
About 30 boats, most of them sailboats, passed in front of the city's beach tooting their horns and displaying appeals to protect the world's oceans.
The UNOC summit, gathering heads of state, scientists and advocates, is meant to cover climate change, pollution, biodiversity and making humanity's access to marine resources more sustainable.
One of the stated goals of the French government was to convince enough states to ratify the High Seas Treaty, adopted by the United Nations in 2023, for it to come into effect. UNOC3 runs from Monday, June 9 to Friday, June 13.
REUTERS VIDEO
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00:00The idea is that the people of the sea, the NGOs of the ocean, are together sailing at the same pace, to the same point,
00:16to bring a testimony to the people on the land who are going or would like them to take important decisions for the ocean.
00:30We have witnessed a lot of international conferences that eventually issue a very ambitious text, but with really no teeth.
00:44We want a text to have teeth, to be able to really impose constraints and be accompanied with final funding.
00:52We need funding. We need money to actually preserve the ocean.
00:56We need money to control. We need money to support the people that live out of the ocean.
01:02And that's what we want. We're not sure it will happen yet. So that's why we're putting pressure on our governments.
01:08We're excited to hopefully celebrate the ratification of the new Global Ocean Treaty, which was agreed two years ago when countries came together.
01:16But at the moment, it's just a piece of paper. It's not protecting anything. So we really need to see that it enter into force as quickly as possible.
01:26All governments committed to the 30-30 target, protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. We really, really need to see progress because 2030 is only around the corner.
01:37So there are lots of countries that are turning their backs on multilateralism at the moment across across the board.
01:43The US is not going to show up to this UNOC and they haven't been engaging in environmental fora across the board.
01:50However, it's really important that champion countries resist this and kind of stand firm on global cooperation.
01:58There is only one ocean and we really need to work together to protect it because we are all reliant on the ocean.
02:05So champion governments need to not retreat into their corners and come together and protect the ocean.
02:11Today, there is committed protection of only 8.34% of the global ocean. We can do better. And we are faced to a global problem.
02:20It's not only climate change. We are also faced to biodiversity loss and we are also faced to pollution in the ocean.
02:27So this triple planetary crisis is a very strong pressure. And so there are different aspects where we have to start to work together, together at a global community,
02:38because this can be only tackled through a global action and a global voice.
02:44For me, every step of creating an international global dialogue provides me with hope because these are threats which are coming from all corners of the world in one way and another.
02:57And so we have to find international agreements and we have to find international informed action, science informed action to tackle those challenges.
03:07If we tackle challenges in the ocean, we will also advance greatly on tackling aspects like climate change and pollution, biodiversity loss, which is essential for societies.
