The High Seas Alliance is pleased to announce that it has been selected as one of 700 projects from around the globe chosen to participate in the second annual Paris Peace Forum, in Paris from November 11th – 13th.
The Paris Peace Forum, initiated by French President Emmanuel Macron, is now an annual meeting convened for global governance actors that provides a platform where examples of collective action to tackle global challenges are brought forward. The Forum is designed to help foster cooperative solutions to global challenges the world currently faces (. i.e., climate change and environmental issues, terrorism, migration, cyber security).
At the Forum, the High Seas Alliance call to action and our plea to world leaders and representatives from all sectors, is that the high seas – an area that compromises 2/3 of the global ocean – nearly half the planet – requires a strong and robust high seas treaty in 2020 that does not institutionalize the status quo, and results in real legal protection for marine biodiversity in the high seas. We will call on world leaders and all participants at the Forum to actively support the BBNJ negotiations at fora and through government ministries to ensure that we do not let this rare opportunity pass us by.
The need for an ambitious high seas treaty is stronger now than ever before as the ocean continues to face effects from ocean warming and acidification, massive dead zones, depletion of fish and marine biodiversity, noise, plastic and chemical pollution, and all the other pressures we now understand that are threatening the ability of the ocean to sustain itself, and us.
And the science is clear. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report highlights the urgency of prioritizing timely, ambitious and coordinated action to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere. Additionally, the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services states that the rate of species extinction across all sectors is already at least ten to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years and is accelerating.
The Paris Peace Forum is a rare opportunity to interact with global governance actors and sectors to push for transformative change for the ocean. After decades of discussions at the United Nations and with new and multiple threats confronting the ocean every single day, there is no time to waste. It is urgent that world governments come together to finalize and ambitious treaty in 2020.