The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) has called on the Government to take the opportunity at next week’s Third United Nations Ocean Conference to announce the long-awaited national legislation on marine protected areas (MPAs).
The Government should act on the MPA Bill with “ ambitious measures to effectively protect and restore Irish waters, rather than continue placating stakeholders with empty promises”, it says.
The Third United Nations Ocean Conference will take place from June 8th to 13th 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,”the IWT says.
“It’s also a chance for countries to ambitiously commit to actions that will protect and restore the ocean,”it says.
This year the conference has three main priorities.
- Working towards the completion of multilateral processes linked to the ocean.
- Mobilising financial resources to support successful actions for Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life under water and supporting a sustainable blue economy.
- Enhancing policymaking through better dissemination and strengthening of marine science.
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, IWT Marine Advocacy Officer sad that “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,”she said.
“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,”she said.
“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,"she said.
" The EU recently ratified the agreement - however 32 additional countries must ratify it before it can be brought into force,”she said.
Since 2022, Irish marine protected area coverage has increased from 2% to just over 9%, she said.
“However, management plans for these areas are still not completed and therefore the areas are not effectively protected,”she said.
