Peter Thomson: Accelerating Decline of Our Oceans is Increasing but It Can be Stopped

The ocean has shaped my life, from my beginnings in the outer islands of Fiji to my appointment last year as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for the ocean.


Like millions of others before me who have taken sustenance and succour from Neptune’s world, I know there is so much for which we should give thanks. And yet, over the intervening decades of my life, a quickening cycle of decline has been imposed on the ocean’s health by the ever-accumulating effects of harmful human activities. Thanks to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, marine life must now battle with increasing levels of acidification, warming and oxygen depletion. Once-pristine waters are fouled by inexorable flows of plastic pollution and damaging effluent from industry, agriculture and sewage.

Meanwhile human greed, as opposed to human need, is depleting the planet’s fish stocks and marine resources at an unsustainable rate. There is a strong causal link between global warming, thermal stress on coral reefs, massive loss of marine biodiversity and the wellbeing of coastal communities. Add rising sea levels and the increasing frequency and ferocity of extreme weather events, and – for an islander like me – it’s easy to imagine that you are drowning.

Does this matter to you, if you live in the urban citadels of post-industrial societies? Contemplate the fact that every second breath you take comes from the ocean’s oxygen, produced by phytoplankton and other marine plant life, and the answer should be abundantly clear. The ocean is this planet’s source of life.

The projected warming per year (indicated by the color-coded bar on the right) of the world’s marine protected areas (indicated by the black dots).

                                                                                      Image: UNC- Chapel Hill

Yet, despite this gyre of decline, I remain a steadfast optimist. I am confident that, by 2030, we will have reversed the negative cycle, and that we will restore our relationship with the ocean to one of respect and balance. My confidence is based on the fact that we have a comprehensive plan to save the ocean, agreed to by all 193 UN member states in 2015 – the Paris climate agreement and the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Fidelity to these is the prime responsibility of all us living in the 21st century. I do not doubt the force of that fidelity, for humankind always bends in the direction of survival.

Sustainable Development Goal 14 sets out to conserve and sustainably use the ocean’s resources. Its 10 targets are in harmony with the other 16 SDGs in working to bring an end to poverty, hunger and the environmental degradation of our planet. An Ocean Conference was held in June 2017 at the UN headquarters in New York in support of implementing SDG 14, and it proved to be the game-changer required to raise global consciousness around the urgent need for remedial action. Over the last year, ocean action has escalated around the world.

In April, the heads of government of 53 Commonwealth nations agreed to a bold Blue Charter to protect the ocean from the threats of climate change, pollution and overfishing. That same month, the International Maritime Organisation adopted an initial strategy to halve global emissions from shipping by 2050. Meanwhile, Canada has announced it is using its 2018 presidency of the G7 to persuade the world’s richest countries to invest in a healthy ocean, pushing for a zero-plastics-waste charter, including support for improved waste management in less developed countries.

Last December, the UN declared 2021-2030 to be the International Decade for Ocean Science, setting the global community the challenge of making a great leap forward in knowledge of our planet. The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area, covering 1.55 million square kilometres of rich marine biodiversity off the coast of Antarctica, was established in the same month.

Governments, states, cities, and organisations around the world are banning single-use plastic shopping bags, drinking straws, cutlery, food packaging and micro-beads. And major food and beverage corporations are increasingly pledging – in reaction to mounting public concern about ocean plastic – that their packaging will be reused, recycled or composted in the near term.


Peter Thomson
United Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean, United Nations