World leaders met on France’s Atlantic coast Friday to discuss protecting the planet’s oceans from threats such as overfishing and plastic pollution and finding fairer ways to manage the seas.
The “One Ocean” summit, initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, was a three-day summit that began on February 9, held in the port city of Brest with the support of the United Nations.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose country will host the UN’s annual climate summit this year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry, and several other African and European leaders attended the event in person. Others were to take part via video messages.
“Today, we are going to make commitments,” Macron said in his opening speech, according to CTV News Canada. “I am convinced they are going to help strengthen helpful actions.”
“Europe has a key role to play”, Macron said, citing upcoming events linked to the preservation of the oceans, including new plans by the United States and France to protect the environment, with an expansion of the protection of the French Antarctic territories, and the United Nations environment assembly summit starting in Nairobi on February 28.
On Friday, President el-Sissi presented Egypt’s efforts to preserve marine resources, according to Africa News.com.
“Early on, Egypt put in place legislation necessary to regulate its economic activities that are related to seas and oceans to ensure the sustainability of marine resources that can protect seas from all forms of pollution, including plastic waste pollution that is considered a real challenge especially for developing countries, that are seeking technological support needed to execute their strategies aiming at the reduction of plastic use harmful to the environment.”
U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also spoke at the event on Friday, urging the world to go beyond words and take action, especially on plastics in our oceans, and illegal fishing practices.
“It is the ocean that makes life on Earth possible, produces more than half of the oxygen that we breathe and even that is at risk (…) the ocean and climate are inextricably linked, they’re one and the same”, Kerry said.
“There are large-scale, extraordinary operations that go on every single day at sea that is indistinguishable from major criminal enterprises on land,” he said, reports Reuters. “They use appalling practices of labor, money laundering, and fraud to destroy the good efforts of fisher people around the world who are trying to live by the rules.”
Unlawful fisheries are “depleting the fish stocks of the world, literally dragging nets that we outlawed several years ago … and throwing away two-thirds of what they catch,” Kerry said. “We create marine protected areas. But we don’t enforce them.”
Kerry may have been referring to the mass fish dump in the Bay of Biscay recently that environmental activists are calling an example of abuses by huge trawlers that disrupt undersea ecosystems.
“Our mission to protect the ocean needs to be as big as our shared responsibility. That is why we have come to Brest today to join forces and turn the tide. Europe can make a huge contribution, as a maritime power”, von der Leyen said. “It is time for an alliance between us and the ocean.”
