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The ocean is the foundation of life.

It supplies the air we breathe and food we eat.

It regulates our climate and weather.

The ocean is our planet’s greatest reservoir of biodiversity.

Its resources sustain communities, prosperity and human health around the world.

Humanity counts on the ocean.

 

But can the ocean count on us?

We should be the ocean’s best friend.

But right now, humanity is its worst enemy.

Human-induced climate change is heating our planet, disrupting weather patterns and ocean currents, and altering marine ecosystems and the species living there. 

Marine biodiversity is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation and ocean acidification.

Over one-third of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels.

And we are polluting our coastal waters with chemicals, plastics and human waste.

 

But this year’s World Oceans Day reminds us that the tides are changing. 

Last year, we adopted an ambitious global target to conserve and manage 30 per cent of land and marine and coastal areas by 2030, as well as a landmark agreement on fisheries subsidies.

At the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, the world agreed to push for more positive ocean action.

A global, legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution is under negotiation.

And in March, countries agreed to the historic High Seas Treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Realizing the great promise of these initiatives requires collective commitment.

 

Sustainable Development Goal 14 — to conserve and sustainably use the ocean’s resources — hangs in the balance.

 

This World Oceans Day, let’s keep pushing for action.

Today and every day, let’s put the ocean first.

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Message from António Guterres, General-Secretary, UN World Oceans Day 2023

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Joy is contagious. If we only talk about the joys of a good environment, though, it is of little avail.

I know that many have turned their backs on more lucrative careers and a life of security, cultivating well-established sciences. This is not enough, how-ever. Life should manifest the peaks of our value priorities. Working for a better environment is, after all, only of instrumental value. We remain on the level of techniques. What criterion shall we use to follow the lead of our personal priorities? We do have one that is underrated among conscientious, responsible people: joy.

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Arne Næss, norwegian philosopher and founder of the Deep Ecology

Man and the Sea

 

Free man, you will always cherish the sea!

The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul

In the infinite unrolling of its billows;

Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.

 

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;

You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart

Is distracted at times from its own clamoring

By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.

 

Both of you are gloomy and reticent:

Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;

O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,

So zealously do you keep your secrets!

 

Yet for countless ages you have fought each other

Without pity, without remorse,

So fiercely do you love carnage and death,

O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!

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Charles Baudelaire - Translation by William Aggeler

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L’empreinte

 

Je m'appuierai si bien et si fort à la vie, 

D'une si rude étreinte et d'un tel serrement

Qu'avant que la douceur du jour me soit ravie

Elle s'échauffera de mon enlacement.

 

La mer, abondamment sur le monde étalée,

Gardera dans la route errante de son eau

Le goût de ma douleur qui est âcre et salée

Et sur les jours mouvants roule comme un bateau.

 

Je laisserai de moi dans le pli des collines

La chaleur de mes yeux qui les ont vu fleurir

Et la cigale assise aux branches de l'épine

Fera crier le cri strident de mon désir.

 

Dans les champs printaniers la verdure nouvelle

Et le gazon touffu sur les bords des fossés

Sentiront palpiter et fuir comme des ailes

Les ombres de mes mains qui les ont tant pressés.

 

La nature qui fut ma joie et mon domaine

Respirera dans l'air ma persistante odeur

Et sur l'abattement de la tristesse humaine

Je laisserai la forme unique de mon cœur

 

Anna de Noailes – L’empreinte

Le cœur innombrable

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