Governments must pass strong, enforceable treaties to protect oceans hit by global warming, overfishing and rampant pollution, Greenpeace activists said while protesting at the UN ocean conference in Lisbon on Thursday.
“Our leaders are not delivering on their promise to protect the oceans,” said Laura Meller, the environmental group’s ocean protection campaign leader.
“We need a strong global ocean agreement that really changes the way we look at the ocean and puts protection over profit,” she said on the sidelines of the five-day meeting, which ends Friday.
Draft treaties due to be finalized this year must “create a network of marine protected areas that allow marine life to heal”.
The Lisbon conference, which brings together government officials, experts and advocates from 140 countries, is not a negotiating forum.
But it will help set the ocean agenda at two crucial summits later this year – the COP27-UN climate talks in November hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15-UN biodiversity talks recently hosted by China were relocated to Canada.
At the heart of the draft COP15 treaty is the determination to designate 30 percent of the world’s land area and oceans as protected areas by 2030.
Currently, less than eight percent of the oceans have protected status.
The United States, European Union countries, Mexico, Canada, Japan and India are among the 100 nations that endorsed the so-called 30 by 30 goal. China, Russia, Indonesia and Brazil have yet to do so.
In August, nations will also seek to finalize a separate treaty – decades in the making – that would regulate the exploitation of marine life on the high seas outside areas of national jurisdiction known as “Exclusive Economic Zones.”
Greenpeace activists attempted to put up a banner depicting a dead shark reading “Killed by Political Action” at the conference site, but were stopped and escorted off the premises.
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