The Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean team is packing after a busy week at COP16 to the Convention on Biological Diversity, in in Cali, Colombia.
“Peace with Nature” has been the theme of this COP. To make and maintain peace with Nature, we must make peace with the Ocean, which is the ultimate biodiversity hotspot, covering 95% of the biosphere!
First stop, Ocean Day
The official COP16 Ocean Day took place on Sunday 27 October, in a large room packed with ocean advocates, policy practitioners, UN and government officials, including Arnoldo André Tinoco, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica, co-chair with France of next year’s UN Ocean Conference in Nice. Panellist at the session on Synergies and Partnerships on that afternoon, our coordinator Rémi Parmentier showcased Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean – our partnership supported by our seven partners and 70 associated stakeholders.
Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean-led events
Two days later, on Wednesday 30 October, we organized and facilitated two side events:
Let’s Be Nice to Coral Reefs, hosted in the morning by the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), a member of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean movement, in their #ForCoral pavilion.
The event was made up of three segments:
Coral Reefs: Guardians of Marine Biodiversity and Coastal Protection, a scene-setting conversation with Ambassador Peter Thomson, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, and Katherine Arroyo, Executive Director of the Costa Rican NGO MarViva.
Justice for Coral Reefs: Enforcing Protection Against Plastic Proliferation, with presentations by Siri Bjune, Head of the UNODC Global Maritime Crime Programme, also a member of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean movement, and André Abreu, Head of International Policy at the Tara Ocean Foundation, one of the founding partners of Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean.
Bottom Trawling’s Lasting Destruction of Coral Reefs, with Sian Owen, Executive Director of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC); Daniel Cáceres from the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, both members of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean movement, and Pierre Cannet, Global Head of Public Affairs and Policy at ClientEarth.
Discussions among the panellists included thoughts on the importance of criminal justice to combat marine plastic pollution; the “non-sense” and in many times, illegality of bottom trawling, which is whipping out habitats and species, including coral reefs; the role of strategic litigation on ocean protection, and the urgent need to reinforce and improve legislation both at national, regional and global levels, with an aspirational goal of 100% protection for coral reefs, including deep water corals under threat due to the emergence of deep-sea mining.
Advancing the Protection Principle, hosted in the afternoon in the Pavilion of Chile.
Facilitated by Isabel Leal of the Varda Group, Advancing the Protection Principle in the Pavilion of Chile consisted in a presentation by our coordinator and author of the new paper Advancing the Protection Principle, followed by a conversation with Professor Dr. Hans-Otto Pörtner of the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany) and former Co-Chair of IPCC WG II; Patsy Contardo, Ocean Affairs Attorney at Chile’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and Puri Canals of Underwater Gardens International.
All panellists welcomed the Protection Principle – including explicitly reversing the burden of proof — as a paradigm shift and agreed that it was important to have this discussion in Nice at the Third UN Ocean Conference next year and beyond.
Rémi Parmentier explained that we are proposing that the Nice Ocean Action Plan, the political outcome document of the Third UN Ocean Conference, agrees to form an ad-hoc group to examine the modalities for implementing the Protection Principle, and report its recommendations in 2027 one year before the Fourth UN Ocean conference, which will be co-chaired by Chile and the Republic of Korea.
All of this could be coordinated by Ministries of the Ocean – Ministries of Ocean Rights, even, with holistic ecosystemic visions, away from the obsolete narrow mandate of Ministries of just Ocean and Fisheries. Let’s stop talking of “fish stocks”. That’s as if we called all forests “wood stocks”; that does not make sense in the 21st Century, we must move away from treating ocean living resources as mere commodities.
20th anniversary of the DSCC and more ocean dialogues
Wednesday ended with another side event in the evening to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition, and the launch of their campaign for a Seamounts Accord.
The Ocean conversation during COP16 also focussed attention of delegates on the urgent need to ratify the BBNJ Agreement on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction so that it enters into force before the Third UN Ocean Conference, a campaign led by the High Seas Alliance, another member of the Let’s Be Nice to the Ocean movement.
On Thursday 31 October, Rémi Parmentier was also invited to speak at the EU Pavilion’s by the EU Respin Project (Reinforcing Science-Policy Interfaces for integrated biodiversity and climate knowledge) to expose relevant plans for the Third UN Ocean Conference.