The goal of the One Ocean Summit is to rouse the global community to take concrete steps to maintain and preserve sustainable and healthy ocean ecosystems. The summit provides an opportunity for all stakeholders, including political leaders, to deliver a decisive contribution through tangible, ambitious, and practical actions and commitments. It is the first big event of the decade devoted to the ocean, and it will take place in the first year of the decade.
The topic has a very high chance of being asked in IAS Prelims as an Environment Question or Current Affairs Question, as it has been in the news recently.
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About One Ocean Summit
The first edition of this conference took place in New York in June 2017. It aimed to stimulate support for conservation and long-term use of the seas, oceans, and marine resources. “Our oceans, our future: partnering for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14″ was the theme of the conference. The governments of Sweden and Fiji hosted the meeting. The 2022 summit took place during France’s presidency of the European Union Council.
The goal of the One Ocean Summit is to enhance the world community’s collective degree of ambition in dealing with marine concerns. Illegal fishing is being combated, shipping is being decarbonized, and plastic pollution is being reduced. It also focuses on attempts to improve high-seas governance and international scientific research coordination.
India and One Ocean Summit
- India has traditionally been a seafaring civilisation. The gifts of the waters, especially marine life, are mentioned in India’s ancient scriptures and literature. Oceans are vital to India’s security and prosperity. Marine resources are a fundamental pillar of India’s “Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative”.
- India backs France’s proposal for a “High Ambition Coalition on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction”.
- The coalition brings together parties who are dedicated, at the highest political tier, to achieving an ambitious result in the ongoing UN sponsored consultations on a High Seas Treaty (“the implementing accord on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction”).
- The “BBNJ Treaty,” also referred to as the “Treaty of the High Seas,” is a United Nations-negotiated international treaty on the protection and sustainable use of maritime biological diversity in areas beyond state control. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the major international accord governing human actions at sea, is developing this new tool.
- India is dedicated to the abolition of single use plastic. India recently launched a nationwide programme to clean up plastic as well as other debris from the country’s coastal areas.
- India has expressed its willingness in joining France in initiating a global push to eliminate single use plastics. The Union Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change has issued the Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021, which, by the year of 2022, will prohibit select single-use plastic items with “poor utility and significant littering potential”. In addition, India’s Navy is instructed to clean the seas of plastic garbage for 100 ship days this year.
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Other Similar Initiatives Concerning Oceans/Seas
- GloLitter Partnerships Project: It was started by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as well as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with initial funds given by the Norwegian government. Its goal is to prevent and eliminate marine plastic pollution caused by shipping and fishing.
- Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI): It is an open, non-treaty based endeavour launched by India enabling countries to work together on collaborative and cooperative remedies to regional concerns. Capacity Building and Resource Sharing, Technology and Academic Cooperation, Maritime Resources, Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Science, Maritime Security, Maritime Ecology, and Trade Connectivity and Navigation are the seven pillars that IPOI focuses on.
- India- Norway Ocean Dialogue: By signing a Memorandum of Understanding and creating the India-Norway Ocean Dialogue in the year of 2019, the Norwegian and Indian governments pledged to collaborate more closely on ocean issues.
- World Oceans Day: The United Nations has designated 8th June as World Oceans Day, a day to commemorate the importance of the oceans in our daily lives and to inspire action to protect the oceans and use marine resources responsibly.
- Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development: The United Nations has declared a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) with the intention to support measures to reverse the cycle of declining ocean health and bring ocean stakeholders from around the world together behind a unified approach which will ensure ocean science can fully support nations in improving conditions for ocean sustainability.
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Significance
Despite the fact that the ocean encompasses more than 70% of our planet’s surface, it is frequently left out of important European as well as global events. The ocean is a key regulator of major ecological balances, including climate, as well as a resource supplier, a vital facilitator of trade, and a vital connector between nations and human groups. Multiple pressures, such as the consequences of climate change, pollution, and overexploitation of marine resources, have put it in jeopardy. France, in close co-operation with the World Bank, and the United Nations, conducted a One Planet Summit devoted to the ocean in order to mobilise the global community and take concrete action to minimise these stresses on the ocean.
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