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This is the eighth of the meetings of the initiative that began in the United States. There, governments from all over the world, businessmen and members of civil society gather to agree on commitments that help protect the oceans. France 24 is in Panama City covering everything that happens there.
Save the oceans with real and measurable actions. That is what the ‘Our Ocean’ conference is looking for, which, in 2023, will be held in Panama from March 2 to 3. It is the first time that this type of meeting is held in a Central American country and it is the second Latin country to host it, after Chile did so in 2015.
The particularity of this meeting is that, unlike what happens in the spaces of the United Nations, the objective is not to reach treaties. Here, both governments, companies and civil society agree on specific commitments to reduce pollution in the oceans, combat the effects that the climate crisis is causing in them and reduce the accelerated loss of biodiversity, impacted by daily actions, such as overfishing.
In this way, more than 1,800 commitments have been made for a value of about 108,000 million dollars during the seven conferences ‘Our Ocean’ (or ‘Our Ocean’, in its original name in English) that have been made so far. Thus, participants from 70 countries have taken concrete actions that, according to the organizationhave managed to protect more than eight million square kilometers of ocean.
In addition to Panama and Chile, the countries that have hosted these meetings are the United States (in 2014 and 2016), Malta (2017), Indonesia (2018), Norway (2019) and the Republic of Palau (2020). On the other hand, Greece has already promised to organize the meeting in 2024 and South Korea will do it in 2025.
The conference arose at the initiative of the United States in 2014 under the then administration of Barack Obama. Since that time, John Kerry has had a leading role in most meetings.
At the first conference, as Secretary of State, advertisement For example, the US government grant of $640,000 for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Acidification Coordination Center, money that was part of the almost two million dollars that the State Department promised for IAEA ocean and marine projects.
Kerry also attended the conference that was held in Chile and will be at the one in Panama, now as the presidential delegate for climate, the first in the United States.
The threats facing the oceans
That the promises made at these conferences are carried out is vital for the health of marine life. And it is that, currently, there are five major threats according to the latest report on how the Sustainable Development Goals are progressing, published in 2022 by the UN. These are pollution, overfishing, acidification, eutrophication and warming.
The biggest pollutant in the oceans is the plastic we produce on land. Every year, at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the waters, constituting 80% of all marine debris, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Destructive fishing activities include excessive, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. This problem is of such enormous dimensions that it is causing many species to become extinct.
As for acidification, this is the increase in acids by the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans. And the more acidic the water, the fewer organisms will be able to live. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that due to the warming that the oceans have already presented, the loss of oxygen in the waters and the acidification, corals are being lost. The degradation of the reefs has been seen since 1997 according to the IPCC and already 20% of them are destroyed, according to the UN.
Lastly, there is eutrophication, which is the increase of phytoplankton on the surfaces of rivers and lakes due to the waste released by humans. This prevents the sun’s rays from entering the water and thus reduces the oxygen of fish and plants.
Faced with all these threats, exacerbated by human activity, it is necessary to take immediate action. For this reason, meetings such as the Our Ocean conference are relevant; especially, so that what is agreed therein is put into practice.
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