Like every year, June 8th celebrates the Ocean Day around the world: a great opportunity to recall that the ocean plays a vital role for the living world and provides essential services to human societies. The ocean, which remains largely unexplored, could shelter between 500,000 and more than 10 million different species. It is the cornerstone of the climate system: it absorbs each year 30% of the CO2 emitted by humans in the atmosphere and more than 90% of the additional heat of anthropogenic origin. These functions are closely linked to the good health of marine ecosystems, which play an important role as a biological carbon pump.
The conclusions of the latest IPCC and IPBES scientific reports, published in 2019, are clear: the world is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis; the climate emergency is real and an everyday challenge; and terrestrial and oceanic biodiversity is threatened by the increasing impacts of human activities. In the ongoing fight against climate change, it is therefore more than necessary to urgently implement concrete actions and solutions to protect biodiversity.
Politically, the year 2020 – the so-called “Super Year” for biodiversity – should have allowed for an ambitious framework to protect biodiversity. The World Conservation Congress, the UN Conference on SDG14, the COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change were all international events from which enhanced ambition and commitments were expected in favour of climate and biodiversity for the coming decade.
However, this ambitious global roadmap for 2020 was temporarily undermined by an unprecedented health crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic the world is currently facing is, yet again, a reminder that the living world is interconnected. Several lessons can be learned from this crisis. It has highlighted the strong links between protecting biodiversity and human health – recalling the need to address these issues together. The same goes for the ocean-climate-biodiversity nexus: climate regulation depends largely on the good health of ocean ecosystems. Protecting the ocean is a priority, but also a formidable source of solutions to build a “Post-Covid” world, more resilient and more respectful of life.
Therefore, the postponement of the international agenda to 2021 should in no way diminish the need to boost political ambition, build common action agendas and develop integrated “ocean-climate-biodiversity” governance. It is our common responsibility to ensure an ambitious trajectory that allows us to move from promises to action and from commitments to solutions, by calling on the political, scientific, economic and civil society forces around the world to gather to achieve international goals and create together the sustainable ocean that our planet needs.