“The increase in water temperature causes extreme phenomena”, declared this Friday Christian Buchet, director of the Center for Sea Studies of the Catholic Institute of Paris, author of “Osons la mer” (Cherche Midi editions), after the violent storms which hit Corsica, causing at least five dead and twenty injured. The Mediterranean Sea is showing temperatures well above normal in this summer of 2022.
franceinfo: The Mediterranean Sea is very hot this summer. Is this a factor that can explain, at least in part, these storms?
Christian Buchet: Of course. In fact, we have been really interested in the ocean for not so long. Even at COP21 in Paris, the ocean was a bit of an absentee when it should be remembered that the oceans provide 50% of the oxygen we breathe and they absorb 30% of our CO2 emissions. The ocean is not intact compared to what we are doing to it. Yes, today we know that the increase in water temperature causes extreme phenomena. If you take the West Indies, there are no more cyclones than before, we are roughly within the same quotas, but the cyclones are much more violent. In the Atlantic, we know that we have a change in the direction of currents and winds. We see the impact that one or two degrees can have on the increase in thunderstorms. So, of course, climate change is one of the causes that contributes to increasing the phenomenon.
“There are climate refugees in a certain number of species. Jellyfish are coming up more and more towards the Atlantic arc because it is getting hotter and hotter”, gives an example of Christian Buchet. But “we can continue to be optimistic”. pic.twitter.com/T9LBHLh0LS
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) August 19, 2022
Negotiations are currently taking place in New York, in which France is taking part, with a view to obtaining a treaty for the protection of the high seas. What do you expect?
Above all, I hope that it will be done quickly because what I expect from it, unfortunately, may take several years. It’s about protecting the world’s waters which belong to no country and in which it is ‘first come, first served’. It means protecting, evaluating, getting to know. Need we remind you that we are in 2022 and that by 2050, it will be the demographic peak. There will be 3 billion more Earthlings, three times the world’s population than at the time of Napoleon in 1804.
Should France play a leading role, in your opinion, in these negotiations on the protection of the sea?
France is already playing a leading role. This initiative started mainly from a certain number of people who brought this project to France. We carry this project of the high seas, yes. However, it is one project among others. We have to negotiate at the UN. It’s not simple if you like, because even if public opinion agrees that everyone is in favor on paper of protecting the sea, there are a whole bunch of nations that don’t have definitely interested in that.