“It is an unprecedented meeting, as the head of state of a host country of a United Nations Conference intends to lift the curtain on the conference by presenting it in a discussion with civil society experts, as well as major global specialists in various fields,” said Tiago Pitta e Cunha, CEO of the Oceano Azul Foundation (FOA), which organizes the event alongside the French Presidency.
Tiago Pitta e Cunha described the Paris meeting as “a much more transversal and less traditional approach” compared to usual intergovernmental conferences, which only involve official delegations from the UN member states.
Titled “SOS Ocean,” this week’s event responds to an appeal from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who last summer at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, issued an SOS for the oceans and urged governments to act immediately to “save our seas.”
The event page notes, “To amplify this global SOS, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, France, and the Oceano Azul Foundation, with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, are convening opinion leaders, policymakers, scientists, and activists from around the world” to jointly address the most urgent ocean challenges.
The gathering will feature speeches by the French head of state, the President of the European Council, António Costa, former U.S. Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore, former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, and actor Harrison Ford, Vice-President of Conservation International.
According to Tiago Pitta e Cunha, the fact that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, seeks to organize this event in cooperation with the Oceano Azul Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies is “a sign of recognition of three years of work the Foundation has been doing with France, with various French governments, and with the office of the French President to create a transformative agenda, leveraging this United Nations Conference.”
The Nice UNOC, the third of its kind, is organized by France and Costa Rica and follows the second UNOC held in Lisbon in 2022.
“It was the largest ocean conference ever held in the world, with over 7,500 delegates,” recalled Pitta e Cunha, considering the organization of that event in Portugal as “a frankly bold leadership act.”
“Many people in the United Nations, many countries, did not want to hold a new Ocean Conference. It was Portuguese diplomacy, and the firmness and skill of Portuguese diplomacy that led us to have this United Nations Ocean Conference in 2022, which then gave rise to this new one now in France, and it is already being predicted that there will be another one,” he stated.
The CEO of FOA views the Nice conference as an opportunity to establish “an agenda that the world desperately needs.”
The Oceano Azul Foundation, founded in 2017, aims to contribute to a healthy and productive ocean for the benefit of all life on the planet.
Founded on science, the work of the Foundation seeks to protect, develop, and enhance the ocean, incorporating areas such as ocean conservation, international ocean advocacy, and the blue economy.
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