António Guterres, at the opening session of the UN Conference on the Oceans, which began today in Lisbon. MIGUEL A. LOPES (EFE)
The oceans flood the world political agenda this week, although it remains to be seen whether the theory about their conservation becomes practice.
The UN Conference on the Oceans, which began this Monday morning in Lisbon and is attended by more than 7,000 people from 142 countries, will produce a declaration that has been under negotiation for two years between the different international delegations and that will not be binding.
The meeting, the second dedicated to the seas after the one held in New York five years ago, certifies the direct relationship between ocean and climate conservation.
"By protecting the oceans, we are fighting against climate change," said UN Secretary General António Guterres during the inauguration.
The oceans provide almost 50% of the oxygen that humanity needs, while they receive from it eight million tons of plastics every year.
In his speech, Guterres was drastic when making the diagnosis: “Unfortunately, we are facing an emergency of the oceans.
We have to change the tide."
"We cannot have a healthy planet without a healthy ocean," he added.
Despite the fact that the conference does not have an executive nature – recommendations will come out of it but not obligations for the states – Guterres tried to value it and pointed out that it gives all the countries the opportunity to bring their positions closer together.
Even those who are currently suffering from international isolation, as is the case with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine: in fact, the conference was attended by the Kremlin Adviser for Climate Affairs, Ruslan Edelgeriyev, who assured that his country maintains its commitments to reach the long-term carbon neutrality.
“We have to recover the time we have lost and give hope a chance”, defended the President of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who recalled that “regimes, institutional and political powers pass.
The oceans remain.
They are millions of years old and precede the human being.
Millions more will endure if we take care of them.”
The pandemic and the war, added the Portuguese head of state, should not serve as an alibi to delay long-term structural challenges.
"This must be the conference of lack of confidence and ambition," he claimed.
In his review of the main threats to the oceans, the UN Secretary General cited rising temperatures and plastic pollution.
Guterres recalled that the Pacific already has a "mass of plastic that has a larger surface area than France" and proposed several measures to defend marine wealth, such as the development of economies focused on the oceans that are sustainable, considering the seas as models to solve global problems and protect the population that depends on the sea from climatic changes.
A more sustainable model of the marine environment would allow, according to Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of Kenya - the country that organized this conference together with Portugal - that the ocean could produce six times more food, generate 40 times more renewable energy and help take out of the poverty to millions of people.
“The ocean is the most underrated resource on our planet.
Most of us do not understand how central the ocean is to human existence," he said.
Along with problems such as illegal fishing or habitat loss, conservation movements want to emphasize the impact of marine mining activity to extract gas or oil, among others.
Several organizations have requested a global moratorium on these extractions until concrete scientific information is available on their environmental impact and their plans to remedy it.
Another of the objectives that will be negotiated these days is the goal to achieve the protection of 30% of marine ecosystems in 2030, which is expected to be approved at the end of this year in Canada at the Conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity .
Some Latin American countries plan to announce at the Lisbon meeting the declaration to protect 30% of their marine area, which would support the commitment made today by the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, who recalled that this year a great step has been taken in Portugal with the decision to increase the Natural Reserve of the Savage Islands, in the Madeira archipelago, from 97 to 2,677 square kilometers.
The measure, approved by the regional government (conservative majority), has made it the largest marine protected area in the North Atlantic.
Costa undertook to transform Portuguese fishing into "one of the most sustainable and low-impact sectors in the world, with 100% of
stocks
maintained within sustainable biological limits" and to produce 10 gigawatts of renewable ocean energy before 2030.