On the last day of the World Summit for the Protection of the Oceans on Friday February 11, François Chartier, Ocean Campaigner at Greenpeace, speaks on franceinfo “half-hearted progress”. The One Ocean Summit was organized as part of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, in Brest. Emmanuel Macron gave the closing speech. In particular, he announced the extension of the national nature reserve of the French Southern Territories. France exceeds the objective it had set of 30% marine protected areas.
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franceinfo: What do we take away from this summit?
Francois Chartier: Clearly, we see that the international mobilization of a large number of States with a view to adopting a treaty is growing. We have had statements from France, China, the United States, the European Union and developing countries. That’s good, because it secures the treaty negotiations. Afterwards, in the content, in the detail, in particular in the mechanisms to really protect the high seas, there is a lack of clarity. It’s still very vague. We would have liked to have more details but at least there is this progress. As for the objective of 30% marine protected areas by 2030, there too the coalition is getting stronger. It’s important, this objective will be negotiated in May, it has to be adapted. It really is the roadmap for marine conservation. There too, there is a lack of clarity and there is vagueness regarding the levels of protection. Will it really be marine protected areas, so who excludes industrial activities? Where are we still in things that are a bit like marine protected areas of paper, where we have beautiful surfaces on the maps, but we leave industrial activities? These are questions that still need to be clarified. So we have made half-hearted progress, all the same, and in particular in their operationalization.
You denounced at the beginning of this summit a “blue washing” operation. Is that still what you say today?
Where this is the case is that on the one hand there is this idea that we are strengthening the collective will to go in particular towards networks of marine protected areas, towards the protection of the high seas, and on the other a push for the extraction, exploration and exploitation of the deep sea.
“We can see that there is a bit of double talk. It was not the center of the subject here, but we tried to put it back in the discussion because there is real hypocrisy there.”
François Chartier, Ocean Campaigner at Greenpeaceat franceinfo
And we forgot about overfishing. We forgot the two predatory activities. Industrial overfishing is where you take biomass, it’s where ecosystems break down, and there hasn’t been a whole lot about overfishing. There is a beginning of progress on the WTO (World Trade Organization) and subsidies. There too, we use somewhat ambiguous language since what is needed for it to work is to eliminate all the fishing subsidies that create distortion and create overfishing.
There is also this launch of the UN negotiations for an international agreement against plastic pollution. Still need binding commitments?
It’s exactly that. For all these agreements, whether for the plastics treaty, but obviously for the high seas. This means that this declared desire, all united to protect the high seas, must be binding, must be effective . Otherwise, we will have negotiated for nothing for years and we will return to the current status quo, which would be a failure. There is urgency for the protection of biodiversity. There is urgency for the climate and there is urgency because ultimately, we are no longer in time for observation. We have heard many observations from presidents and heads of state. The observation, finally, we know it. The diagnosis has been made for years, even decades, in any case for 20 years. Now the urgency is to act. The solutions, we have them. Just implement them. This means changing the model, especially for industrial activities. What we fear a little is that the blue economy part, the productivist part, development of the economy of the sea, it works and that the conservation protection part, so the second round loses its liveliness in the negotiation, this is where we are a bit skeptical. Yes, you have to change the model. We must move towards a circular economy, with an economy of sobriety, for all the resources that we take out of the oceans.