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‘Our Ocean’ view wins accord
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In this file photo, members of the United Nations (UN) are attending the plenary meeting of the Ocean Conference at the UN headquarters in New York, on June 5, 2017. (Courtesy of/PTRI)
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nited Nations member countries, including Indonesia, have agreed to restore oceans and protect marine life as concluded in the Ocean Conference, except when it comes to the interests of big countries.
The first-ever UN high level meeting on ocean issues has reached its milestone with a document consisting of 14 paragraphs covering illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, elimination of fisheries subsidies that lead to overfishing and marine conservation.
“There’s no North- South, East-West when it comes to the ocean,” said UN General Assembly president Peter Thomson, who hosted 4,000 participants from 193 UN member countries in the five-day UN summit, which ended on Friday. “If the ocean is dying, it’s dying on all of us.”
For Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, the “Our Ocean, Our Future: Call for Action” document, which will be endorsed through a new resolution by the General Assembly during its 71st session, is in line with her vision about preserving the ocean.
“We need to acknowledge that the ocean and the lives in it have the right to live sustainably. We need to have a designated body at the global level that protects the ocean’s rights and ensures that such protection will not be affected by political agendas,” she said.
However, two big countries, the United States and Russia, did not agree entirely with the other countries, as they opposed several crucial points in the Ocean Conference outcome and chose to display a “my country first” approach rather than an “our ocean” one.
The US claimed it had joined in adopting the legally non-binding “Call for Action,” while at the same time indirectly conveying a message of how the Ocean Conference was two steps behind its own climate change policy.
