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The Irish Wildlife Trust is calling on the Irish Government to take the opportunity of the Third United Nations Ocean Conference to announce the long awaited national MPA Bill with ambitious measures to effectively protect and restore Irish waters, rather than continue placating stakeholders with empty promises.
The Third United Nations Ocean Conference will take place from the 8th to the 13th of June in Nice, France. This conference is an opportunity to assess countries progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life under water and highlight issues and solutions which need to be implemented in order to reach this goal. It’s also a chance for countries to ambitiously commit to actions that will protect and restore the ocean.
This year the conference has three main priorities.
The last UN Ocean Conference took place in Lisbon in 2022 and resulted in the high level political declaration entitled ‘Our Ocean, our future, our responsibility’ and covered many topics including the negative impacts of climate change, overfishing, ocean noise and plastic pollution.
Grace Carr, Marine Advocacy Officer for the Irish Wildlife trust said, ‘While sometimes it can be disheartening to see the lack of real ambitious actions being implemented in the years between these conferences, the event offers an opportunity to put some real pressure on Governments around the world to start putting into practice what they promise on paper. We hope to see a strong Irish delegation at the conference and some ambitious promises turned into legally binding actions as we are quickly running out of time to protect our marine environment.
While there has been some progress on issues discussed at the last UN Ocean Conference, we are still falling short of what needs to be done to effectively protect the ocean. Since the last conference there has been further support for the High Seas Treaty, a legally binding instrument to protect the high seas beyond national jurisdiction. The EU recently ratified the agreement however, 32 additional countries must ratify it before it can be brought into force.
It was noted at the last conference that we are running out of time to effectively protect the oceans and the need for urgent action is high. Progress has remained slow nationally as well as globally. Since 2022, Irish marine protected area coverage has increased from 2% to just over 9%. However, management plans for these areas are still not completed and therefore the areas are not effectively protected. We are still waiting for the Marine Protected Area Bill which The Irish Wildlife Trust and other members of Fair Seas advocated for at the last UN Ocean Conference. The Irish Wildlife Trust hopes that the Irish government will make the most of this opportunity to announce ambitious measures to protect and restore life in Irish waters.
Contact
Grace Carr, Irish Wildlife Trust Marine Advocacy Officer, grace@iwt.ie