THE five-day Ocean Summit has shifted to first gear in Nice, France, with some 50 heads of state and government gathering there to confront the United Nations-described “global emergency” in the oceans.
This is the third UN Conference (UNOC3), ending on Friday, to find a way forward to better protect what experts call the the liquid heart of the “blue planet” – a byname from the planet’s remarkable feature of vast amount of water covering approximately 71 percent of its surface and containing more than 97 percent of the planet’s total amount of water.
The Earth’s atmosphere scatters shorter blue wave lengths of light, while bodies of water reflect sunlight, resulting in the dominant blue color.
Mankind gets from the ocean 50-80 percent of the oxygen it breathes, thanks to the process of photosynthesis that tiny marine algae known as phytoplankton produce.
Oceans regulate the global climate by moving warm and cold masses of sea waters around the planet, the warm currents moving to the poles along the surface, and as they reach the poles they cool down, and sink, circling back from the depths towards the equator, according to the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
This regulates the global climate and maintains the balance of marine and land ecosystems.
Last Sunday, the world leaders descended on Nice on the eve of the high-level summit to tackle the intensifying crisis in the oceans driven by climate change, pollution and overfishing.
With the “emergency” on their table, leaders gathering in Nice are under pressure to commit much-needed money and stronger protections for the off color seas and the people that depend on them.
UNOC3 must beat this critical point, as it were, as nations quarrel over deep-sea mining, plastic litter and exploitative fishing, against a backdrop of wider geopolitical tensions.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in Monaco on Sunday for a pre-conference event on ocean finance, said: “We have a duty to mobilize, because the science is clear and the facts are there.”
Among the 50 heads of state and government attending are Brazilian President are Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who succinctly said “The planet can no longer tolerate broken promises; either we act, or the planet is in danger.”
The Philippines, for its part, has a National Plan of Action for the Prevention, Reduction and Management of Marine Litter, which has been developed to provide a blueprint to enhance its current efforts in resource and waste management and bring additional lens to marine litter issues and the control of additional leakage of waste into bodies of water.
Our eyes and ears are keenly tuned in to the Nice Summit.