Giving the Ocean a Fighting Chance Through the Great Blue Wall — Global Issues

Opinion by James A Michel (victoria, seychelles)Monday, December 02, 2024Inter Press Service

Backed by coastal communities, governments, the personal sector, NGOs and donors, is a rising world 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 world warming within the Western Indian Ocean. It’s a roadmap which spearheads the institution of a linked community of regenerative seascapes.

This community might be linked by a residing blue wall that can act as a regional ecological hall shaped by conserved and restored vital blue ecosystems akin to mangroves, seagrasses, corals and coastal forests.

While the Nice Blue Wall will act as a wall in opposition to local weather change impacts and biodiversity loss, it’s going to additionally shield coastal communities, their tradition and livelihoods, and create the enabling situations and vital mechanisms to speed up the event of a regenerative blue financial system.

By 2023, the Nice Blue Wall will equitably and eAectively shield, preserve and handle at the very least two million km sq. of the Ocean; it’s going to help the achivement of a net-gain of biodiveristy by conserving and restoring at the very least two million hectares of vital ecosystems and sequester a couple of hundred million tons of carbon; and it’ll unlock regenerative livelihood alternatives and create at the very least two million blue jobs, while advocating and offering help to nations within the world south.

On the twenty sixth session of the Convention of the Events to the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change, which befell 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 powerful 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 assets to accomplice with us on this journey to advertise and develop an inclusive nature-people blue financial system structure based mostly on the Nice Blue Wall, unlocking the complete potential of the event of the blue financial system pushed by conservation and regeneration.

Since its launch, the Nice Blue Wall has achieved many milestones:

By means of 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 financial system by catalysing political management and monetary help.

After I was first introduced with this initiative, I used to be instantly satisfied of its uniqueness, its objective, 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 help 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 might be partnering with the ODISEA expedition on an expedition to discover and shield 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 supply the science that can inform their choices and unveiling the native information that can information their actions. This expedition will bear witness and be an actor in what might be remembered because the Rise of our Blue Guardians.

At this time, many individuals are taking possession of their responisibilty of the way forward for the Ocean behalf of current and future generations. At this time, 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 objectives, the Nice Blue Wall is predicated on a premise of three key pillars – regenerative seascapes, local weather change and a regenerative blue financial system – to create resilient methods 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 financial system idea because the savior of our planet. At this time, this actuality is being talked about in all nations world wide. There’s an ecological imbalance within the Ocean and its eAects are reaching us.

It is crucial for all of us to do not forget that our relationship with the Ocean is one in every of reciprocity. While we’re depending on it for our survival, it is dependent upon us to make sure it is ready to proceed to offer for us.

James Alix Michel, former President of Seychelles.

IPS UN Bureau

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