Protect the world's oceans, leaders urge

At least 30% of the world’s oceans must be protected by 2030 for the landmark UN biodiversity summit being held in Montreal, Canada, this week to be a success, said scientists, political, business and indigenous leaders on Thursday.

Progress towards this, and other targets for a global biodiversity framework for the decade, have been slow so far.

Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, minister of natural resources and the environment in Samoa, said the country's survival depended on protecting its oceans and species. About 98% of their territory is under the sea.

“We want to protect not only our territory, but also our marine resources, which are our livelihood. Our survival depends on having a collective global goal of 30% of oceans protected, not just for our economy, but it is also our cultures and our livelihoods,” he said.

More than 100 countries, out of nearly 200 countries at the COP15 summit, support the goal to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans and lands by 2030, but for a final agreement, there must be consensus by all of them.

Gabon minister of water, forests, the sea and the environment, Lee White, said protecting the oceans was a “win-win” for everybody and should be easier to agree on than setting up reserves on land. The nation on the west coast of Central Africa has created 20 marine protected areas, amounting to 27% of its oceans.

“The wonderful thing about protecting 30% minimum of the oceans is that, if you design it right, you increase productivity, you increase the potential sustainable catch of fisheries, you restore fisheries, you restore the oceans,” he said.

“So the marine 30x30, which seems more problematic here than land, should be easier given the co-benefits for traditional fisheries communities, the co-benefits for carbon sequestration, the co-benefits for our climate and so on,” White said.

“If it doesn’t make ecological sense, it does not make long-term economic sense because it cannot possibly be sustainable.”

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on Thursday urged “leaders to leave their trust issues at the door and cease the game of chicken and egg between ambition and resources that has gone on for far too long” to make progress on a new global action plan for nature.

South Africa is among countries from the Global South which are demanding, however, that commensurate finance be set up to support targets, such as 30x30, before they can commit to them. Shuster said they want to push for “new money”.

From the perspective of traditional leaders, like Native Hawaiian elder, Solomon Pili Kaho'ohalahala, 30% is a milestone but they want a higher goal. Everything living in the ocean, from a native Hawaiian perspective, is considered to be an ancestor, and 30% is not enough.

“It is almost saying as though only 30% of our ancestors are important and that the other 70%, we might just have to put them aside. So you see, it's really difficult for us to just create these percentages, these boundaries and these lines,” he said.

Renowned National Geographic explorer and executive director of Pristine Seas, Enric Sala, spoke at the briefing about the urgency of protecting oceans, but also about their wonders, and resilience of nature.

“I just came back from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean,” said Sala, who was swimming there with groups of sperm whales, up to 12m long. “It is an island that has already protected 45% of the land and 65% of the land is forest.

“The entire canopy disappeared during Hurricane Maria in 2017, but five years later, they have recovered everything. The forest is resilient because it was protected in the ocean,” he said.

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.