Photo: AFP / Christoph Gerigk / Biosphoto
The third UN Ocean Conference kicks off on Monday in Nice, France.
Leaders, civil society groups, scientists and businesses, including those from the Pacific region, are due to attend the week-long summit.
Dr Filimon Manoni, the current Pacific Ocean Commissioner, will be among the Pacific contingent at the conference. His role, established through the Pacific Islands Forum architecture, is to advocate for ocean priorities regionally and internationally.
Manoni touched on what he expected to be discussed this week in a special pre-conference briefing.
"We want this also to be the platform it needs to be - one where we can share our knowledge and success stories, to bring in traditional knowledge and share that, to show how traditional knowledge systems have helped the region manage our resources sustainably for generations," Dr Manoni said.
"We want to share the community-led, coastal marine protected area initiatives [and] coastal resilience initiatives that are working in the Pacific."
Examples of successful initiatives included the region's work on tuna fisheries management. The main tuna stock has been brought back from the "verge of extinction" through regional management techniques, he said.
Now, Dr Manoni said, between 50 and 60 percent of the global tuna supply was from the western and central Pacific Ocean. He also pointed to the establishment of marine protected areas like the Cook Islands Marae moana, and more recently, the Marshall Islands marine sanctuary around Bikar and Bokak atolls.
"Pacific solutions are not only Pacific solutions, but Pacific solutions are indeed global solutions," Dr Manoni said.
"So what we want to see at the end of the summit of this conference is that the world lives with more understanding and respect for communities that rely on the ocean for livelihoods.
Marine biologist and leading ocean conservationist Enric Sala said any progress around ocean sustainability would depend on the quality of commitments attendees agreed to over the week.
Currently, eight percent of the world's oceans were protected. The goal was for that figure to be 30 percent by 2030, however Sala said the right areas of ocean need to be prioritised.
"This is about quality as much as it is about quantity. It's not protecting any 30 percent of the ocean," he said.
"We could protect areas that are now under ice and the least productive areas of the high seas and cover 30 percent of the oceans... yet that would not make any difference."
Photo: 123rf/NASA
Sala said the focus must be on ocean commitments and initiatives that increased marine life beyond what existed right now.
That approach had already shown to be fruitful, both for ocean conservation and for interested industries like tuna fisheries, he said.
For example, the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world located in the north-western region of the Hawaii islands.
Sala said the sanctuary had led to increased tuna stocks both inside and around the protected area, benefiting tuna fisheries in the region.
"The science is very clear. We have discovered over and over again that the only way for marine life to really recover is through fully protected areas where there are no extractive managing activities," he said.
"And we have plenty of examples from the Pacific and from around the world, showing that the fishing industry is actually catching more fish and lobsters and scallops around no-take areas now than before, when they were fishing all over the place."
Tuvalu's Prime Minister Feleti Teo has urged global leaders to recognize their collective responsibility.
"No nation, no city, and no community are immune to the impacts of climate change, nor should they be required to address the devastating effects of sea level rise on their own."
During his address at the Ocean Rise and Resilience Coalition Summit, Teo said finding the right solutions will require statesmanship and empathy, "beginning with an acknowledgment that a situation globally caused must also have a globally just and equitable solution".
The UN Ocean Conference occurs every three years. This week's official programme is due to finish on 13 June.
