VICTORIA, Seychelles, Dec 02 (IPS) – The Ocean is our life supply, however for many years it has been repeatedly marred by humankind. With the disposal of pollution into the Ocean, overexploitation of Ocean sources and the human-driven improve of worldwide temperatures, the Ocean is altering and never for the higher.
Our Oceans are warming, corals are dying, fish shares are declining, poisonous chemical substances are being launched into the Ocean – these eAects are clearly seen at this time, however there may be hope. There are organisations from all all over the world which might be combating to avoid wasting our Ocean.
Backed by coastal communities, governments, the non-public sector, NGOs and donors, is a rising international multi-stakeholder partnership led and pushed by the worldwide south.
The Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Nice Blue Wall Initiative stands out as a first-of-its-kind eAort to create a linked community of protected marine areas to fight local weather change and international warming within the Western Indian Ocean. It’s a roadmap which spearheads the institution of a linked community of regenerative seascapes.
This community shall be linked by a residing blue wall that may act as a regional ecological hall shaped by conserved and restored crucial blue ecosystems corresponding to mangroves, seagrasses, corals and coastal forests.
While the Nice Blue Wall will act as a wall towards local weather change impacts and biodiversity loss, it’s going to additionally defend coastal communities, their tradition and livelihoods, and create the enabling circumstances and mandatory mechanisms to speed up the event of a regenerative blue economic system.
By 2023, the Nice Blue Wall will equitably and eAectively defend, preserve and handle no less than two million km sq. of the Ocean; it’s going to assist the achivement of a net-gain of biodiveristy by conserving and restoring no less than two million hectares of crucial ecosystems and sequester multiple hundred million tons of carbon; and it’ll unlock regenerative livelihood alternatives and create no less than two million blue jobs, while advocating and offering assist to nations within the international south.
On the twenty sixth session of the Convention of the Events to the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change, which passed off in Glasgow in 2021, I delivered the opening speech on the Launch of the Nice Blue Wall Initiative.
There, I urged all nations to proceed presenting a robust frequent entrance and work collectively turning ambitions into concrete actions to unleash the potentials of the Blue Financial system, and known as on nations and organisations with sources to associate with us on this journey to advertise and develop an inclusive nature-people blue economic system structure based mostly on the Nice Blue Wall, unlocking the total potential of the event of the blue economic system pushed by conservation and regeneration.
Since its launch, the Nice Blue Wall has achieved many milestones:
By these milestones, the Nice Blue Wall guarantees to ship. It guarantees to speed up and upscale ocean conservation actions whereas enhancing socio-ecological resilience and the event of a regenerative blue economic system by catalysing political management and monetary assist.
After I was first offered with this initiative, I used to be instantly satisfied of its uniqueness, its function, the outcomes it goals to realize and the nature-people relationship it’s searching for to re-establish and strengthen. So, I pledged my full assist to the Nice Blue Wall and have promoted it ever since.
In November 2024, I used to be appointed as a Excessive-Stage Champion of the Nice Blue Wall on the twenty ninth assembly of the United Nations Local weather Change Convention in Baku, Azerbaijan. And through this convention, it was additionally introduced that the Nice Blue Wall shall be partnering with the ODISEA expedition on an expedition to discover and defend biodiversity within the Western Indian Ocean.
On this press convention I used to be moved by the phrases of Thomas Sberna, IUCN Regional Head Coastal and Ocean Resilience of Jap and Southern Africa:
[This expendition] is about giving a voice to the unheard and bringing a lightweight to the unseen. It is about telling their tales. It is about enabling them to provide the science that may inform their choices and unveiling the native data that may information their actions. This expedition will bear witness and be an actor in what shall be remembered because the Rise of our Blue Guardians.
Right this moment, many individuals are taking possession of their responisibilty of the way forward for the Ocean behalf of current and future generations. Right this moment, the Blue Financial system is seen as a driver of conservation and growth and we’re unlocking its full potential. It may be sustainable. It may be regenerative. It may be people-centred.
To information its growth and implementation, and to realize its targets, the Nice Blue Wall relies on a premise of three key pillars – regenerative seascapes, local weather change and a regenerative blue economic system – to create resilient programs constructed upon strengthening connectivity and variety in any respect ranges and of all nature.
Fourteen years in the past, I noticed the structure of the blue economic system idea because the savior of our planet. Right this moment, this actuality is being talked about in all nations all over the world. There’s an ecological imbalance within the Ocean and its eAects are reaching us.
It is crucial for all of us to keep in mind that our relationship with the Ocean is one among reciprocity. While we’re depending on it for our survival, it will depend on us to make sure it is ready to proceed to supply for us.
James Alix Michel, former President of Seychelles.
IPS UN Bureau
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