WORLD OCEAN DAY 2020- INNOVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE OCEAN
By Pacific Ocean Commissioner- Dame Meg Taylor
Warm Greetings to you all across our vast Pacific Ocean.
Today as the Pacific’s Ocean Commissioner I join with all citizens of the Blue Planet to celebrate World Ocean Day. This year, amid the COVID 19 pandemic, World Ocean Day cannot and must-not be forgotten.
COVID19 has pushed to the background critical and ground-breaking international negotiations, in-particular-on climate change and ocean governance. For The Blue Pacific Continent the ocean will almost certainly be important for our countries and communities as we seek to recover from the social and economic impacts of COVID19.
The theme for this World Ocean Day is Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean. Our ancestors developed unique navigation skills and engineering and they depended on the ocean as much as we continue to do so today. It is from these learnings, that we understand the immensity of the ocean, its cultural importance, and its value for our food, for our movement and for our livelihoods. We must not forget this as we seek innovation and solutions for our sustainable development – now and into the future.
2020 was to be the Super Year for attention and focus on the World’s Ocean. It was to have featured the second UN Ocean Conference, the closing of negotiations for an international treaty for biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions, the Our Ocean Conference in Palau, decision on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework at the UN CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) COP15, and discussion on ocean – climate nexus at the UNFCCC COP26.These events will take place at a time when it is safe to do so, and coupled with The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which starts next year to support efforts to reverse the decline of ocean health and ecosystems, this provides opportunity for all of us to think differently and innovatively, and act differently, creatively and constructively to ensure the World’s Ocean is supported towards a recovery that will sustain us now and future generations. Our advocacy and actions on and for The Blue Pacific Continent has a direct link to the Health and Wellbeing of the Blue Planet.
I am heartened by the regional efforts I have witnessed to conserve and care for our ocean. As Pacific Ocean Commissioner, I coordinate the Pacific Ocean Alliance. It has highlighted for me the importance of ensuring that the many interests and many stakeholders are heard and are considered if we are to sustainably manage, conserve and use our ocean and its resources for our people and wellbeing.
Our ocean is our greatest natural asset, it is the world’s largest oceanic continent, it makes a significant contribution to regulating the world’s climate, it is key to supporting life on our blue planet and to ensuring the wellbeing of all peoples. Therefore, innovation for a Sustainable Ocean is an imperative if we are all to live free and worthwhile lives.
I would like to end on a personal note – growing up in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Ocean was a world away from us. As a child my first contact with the Ocean was through the shells that were traded from the Coast to the Highlands – it was our currency. But being the Pacific Ocean Commissioner during these past six years has given me a great appreciation of the Ocean and Seas and the peoples of the Pacific. For every country on the Blue Pacific Continent that I visit I make the time to swim in the ocean. I have taken the opportunity to swim with turtles in Vanuatu and with Humpback whales in Tonga. Both extraordinary experiences that have given me the appreciation for the enormity and value of the Blue Pacific – its size and its creatures. But I do realise that it is more than the ocean space – it is the interconnectedness of people, place and prospects. The Ocean is in us all.
ENDS….
Media contact:
Mereseini Marau
Mobile or WhatsApp: +679 9985273
Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
