An international conference about ocean protection is incomplete without the voices of the Pacific region, says Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, Ambassador in charge of Poles and Maritime issues, Special Envoy of the French President for the Third United Nations Ocean Conference.
En route to the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga this week, Poivre d’Arvor is eager to ensure Pacific representatives are prepared for the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France next year.
“This third ocean conference should be, for the international community, as important for the ocean as COP in 2015, COP21, was for the climate. And we want to do for the ocean something as ambitious as we have done with the Paris Agreement,” Poivre d’Arvor told media in Fiji last week.
“We observe the loss of biodiversity, the pollution, not only plastic pollution but all kinds of pollution we are facing, the need of decarbonisation for maritime transport, which represents 92% of the global trade in the world; so it’s a huge business. It’s a business that, if we carry on this way, making money with the ocean, the ocean will be not only in danger, but we will be in danger,” he said.
In Suva, Poivre d’Arvor said he met with Fiji’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, representatives of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and several businesses, NGOs and academic institutions.
“I met official people, I met business people, I met also NGOs, and I was, I should say, very impressed by the commitment of these young people, a lot of women, I should say, a majority of women, who really fight for the ocean, for the protection of the ocean,” he said.
“It was great also for me to have discussion with the vice-chancellor of the University of South Pacific, the vice-chancellor of the Fiji National University as well, because if we need to know more about the ocean, academics are very important.”
Poivre d’Arvor said there will be a pre-conference session ahead of the UN Ocean Conference next year which will be dedicated to the ocean science
“There will be a forum of three days, and 2000 scientists from all over the world will make recommendations to the leaders,” he said.
When asked about the Pacific’s involvement in the upcoming conference, Poivre d’Arvor said, “they have to be in the centre, and we have to be a bit at the back seat. We will invite them, and provide them the funds to be there, not only officials, not only authorities, but also, as I said, young people, the young generation, NGOs.
“Let’s try to make the ocean a place of science and peace, and not only a place of money and destruction of the planet,” he said. “You know the ocean better than us, and perhaps we can help you to know even more than you know now.”