A weeklong summit hosted by France and Costa Rica will seek political and financial support to reverse ocean warming, pollution, and overfishing.
The 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference, opening on Monday in Nice, France, brings together 10,000 people, including 50 world leaders, in hopes of raising commitments and financing for stronger ocean protections.
"The planet can no longer tolerate broken promises," Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. "Either we act or the planet is in danger."
France's President Emmanuel Macron took aim at climate deniers and budget-cutters. "We've been hearing that, basically, climate change, the threat to biodiversity, the issue of the oceans, all of that, is a matter of opinion," he told a pre-summit ocean finance event in Monaco.
"No, we don't have the right to do that because it's not an opinion, but it's scientifically established," he said. "We have a duty to mobilize because the science is clear and the facts are there. There is no inevitability."
Scientists, activists and businesses also are gathering in Nice to take on climate change, plastic pollution, and overfishing, along with other misuses of ocean resources that lead to biodiversity and habitat loss.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described the summit as "a crucial moment to advance these priorities and renew the world’s collective promise to the ocean" that supplies the air we breathe, the food we eat, the jobs we need, and the climate we count on.
"The distress signals are clear – from plastic-choked waters to collapsing fish populations and loss of marine ecosystems, from rising temperatures to rising seas," he said. "We must sustain what sustains us. The illusion that the ocean can absorb limitless emissions and waste must end."
Guterres called for massive investments in science, conservation, and the "sustainable blue economy," and for far greater support to coastal communities, Indigenous peoples and small island developing nations that already struggle with rising seas and other climate effects.
Bottom trawling a target of conservationists
Delegations from Pacific island nations sought more financing as activists warned the summit must produce more than fine speeches. Demonstrators and thousands of police also descended on Nice, the second-largest French Mediterranean coastal city and French Riviera capital.
"The U.N. Ocean Conference is an opportunity for governments to turn commitments into action," said ocean advocate Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of French explorer and marine conservationist Jacques Cousteau and senior advisor to Washington-based Oceana, the largest international advocacy organization focused solely on ocean conservation.
She pointed to bottom trawling, which uses weighted nets dragged indiscriminately along the ocean floor to capture fish and other marine life, as one of the most destructive global fishing practices that is occurring even in France, which claims to have protected more than 30% of its coastal waters.
In Dec. 2022, a U.N. biodiversity summit arrived at a historic global deal that aims to conserve for wildlife at least 30% of the planet's land, freshwater and ocean resources by 2030, while mobilizing $200 billion a year to help meet the targets. Environmentalists' goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030 is a target scientists say is needed to protect species and help mitigate impacts of climate change.
"Allowing bottom trawling in marine protected areas makes a mockery of the very concept of protection," Cousteau said, referring to a new Oceana analysis showing 100 bottom trawling vessels apparently spent 17,000 hours fishing in six marine areas France is supposed to protect. "President Macron and France have an opportunity to lead. The time to act is now."
