Which Knowledge for which Sustainable Ocean Governance? Closing Address by Ambassador Peter Thomson, UNSG’s Special Envoy for the Ocean

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen.

All courtesies observed and greetings to one and all. It is good to be here with so many old friends, even if we’re still only meeting in cyberspace. I’m confident we will soon be back in each other’s presence, but until that day, a smiling face on a screen and some good ideas to share will have to suffice.

Many of you will have heard my message given three weeks ago to the World Ocean Summit. I am repeating elements of it now, because I believe we must constantly remind ourselves of the context of the times in which we are living, lest we let down our guard and imagine everything will be all right if we do nothing.

In his State of the Planet address delivered at Colombia University in New York last December, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said humanity is waging a suicidal war upon Nature. He reported that one million species are at risk of extinction and that ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes. A year earlier at the Climate COP in Madrid, he had warned that three major reports of the IPCC confirm we are knowingly destroying the life-support systems of our planet.

Virtually all coral reefs will be dead when we go through the dreaded level of 2 degrees Celsius. At this point, remember we cannot have a healthy planet without a healthy Ocean. Our predicament is that we are not heading to a destination of 2 degrees; on the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, we are heading to a temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. That is a direct quote from the head of the World Meteorological Organisation, and that is a world on fire. My beautiful granddaughter Rose will be eighty years old at the end of this century. I refuse that burning future for her.

I hope you believe in the dictum, “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” None of us should imagine we are powerless; and that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is my lodestar of hope.

Let me turn to what we are doing to correct our ways at the macro level of countries and multilateral convenings. How are we dragging ourselves to the peace table, whereupon we can make good with Nature?

The most tangible peace table we have, comes in the shape of the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. This is the blueprint we have universally agreed to for a secure and equitable future. The great challenge is faithful implementation of the blueprint’s provisions and it’s no secret that we have been lagging.

The transformative action to which all of us are called is that of moving to a net zero economy by 2050. Science has established that this is the destination we must reach, one in which we emit no more carbon dioxide than we remove from the atmosphere. Get to a net zero economy by 2050 and we will keep global warming well below that fateful level of 2 degrees Celsius.

How does all this relate to the Ocean and the implementation of SDG14? Well, you’ve already heard my mantra that there can’t be a healthy planet without a healthy Ocean, to which I should add the Ocean’s health is currently in decline. As I’m sure you are all aware, the chief cause of that decline is the burgeoning levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the atmosphere. Therefore, getting to a net zero economy is absolutely fundamental to ending the cycle of decline in which the Ocean’s health has been caught.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the question posed by today’s event, “Which Knowledge for which Sustainable Ocean Governance.” Which knowledge? My answer to that would be the exponential accumulation and open sharing of the knowledge acquired during the UN Decade of Ocean Science. We can see from IOC-UNESCO’s implementation plan for the Decade that this is no straw horse, it is already apparent that the Decade will be the great leap forward, long-demanded, in our understanding of the Ocean’s properties.

The positive implications of equitable sharing of this accumulating scientific knowledge of the Ocean could prove to be the existential bedrock of humanity’s future. From renewable energy to carbon sequestration, from sustainable blue foods to new medicines in the wake of the declining antibiotic age, we look with hope and determination to the findings of the UN Decade of Ocean Science. I say to everyone, get involved in this great collaboration. There is one Ocean, and it is your future.

As to governance, as a student of political science, I sincerely doubt there has ever been in human history a perfect example of governance. And so, let me quote one of the inspirational governors of the past, Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher and Emperor of Rome, who once said, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be. Be one!”

Turning to today’s pages of human history, we surely have all the governance institutions we need to get the job done. Yes, these institutions should be reformed from time to time; yes, they should be evaluated and improved; but we just do not have the luxury of time, in the face of the looming environmental crisis, to be distracted from the urgent tasks at hand.

These multilateral governance institutions all have their mandates and responsibilities, but let us remember they are all subject to the same over-arching and universal blueprint for a secure and equitable future to which I referred earlier in these remarks. Our political leaders, Heads of State and Heads of Government, committed to that blueprint in New York and Paris in 2015.

Thus, I urge all those governing institutions, through their governing bodies and dedicated officers serving in the field around the world, to just do it. WTO remove harmful fisheries subsidies; FAO bring an end to IUU and unsustainable fishing; UNEP get on top of marine plastic pollution; UNDP bring resilience to vulnerable coastal communities; UN Regional Commissions actively commit your regions to SDG14 implementation; and IOC deliver us the science we need for the Ocean we want.

But mostly to all of us, we must play our part in realising SDG14’s purpose of conserving and sustainably using the Ocean’s resources. The United Nations does not exist in isolation; it is made up of 193 Member States, and that means my government and yours. Talk to your governments. Let them know that reversing the decline in the Ocean’s health is vital to you and your children. And equally importantly, we must face up to our personal habits and make the necessary transformations of our diets, energy use, transportation and the choices we make as consumers and voters.

I will close now with some remarks made recently by that stalwart of Ocean action, Senator John Kerry, when he said, “For far too long, an Ocean meeting was an Ocean meeting and a climate negotiation was just that, a climate negotiation, without people recognising the interconnectedness and the majesty of the ecosystem. So, we need to say goodbye to silos. When you are meeting about the Ocean, you are meeting about the climate.” And of course, the reverse also applies.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are all on the virtual road to Kunming, Glasgow and Lisbon. Resist any silos along the way. If the door is not opened to you, just walk around the silo, and continue along the righteous path to our common destination: a net zero world by 2050. Understand the connectivity and we will be able to identify the solutions that will return humanity’s place on this planet to one lived in respect for, and in balance within, Mother Nature’s eternal embrace.

I thank you.