UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday announced an initiative to protect oceans from pollution and over-fishing and to combat rising sea levels which threaten hundreds of millions of the world’s people.
The UN chief said the “Oceans Compact” initiative sets out a strategic vision for the UN system to more effectively tackle the “precarious state” of the world’s seas.
Ban highlighted the “grave threat” from pollution, excessive fishing and global warming.
“Our oceans are heating and expanding,” he said in a speech to a conference marking the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“We risk irrevocable changes in processes that we barely comprehend, such as the great currents that affect weather patterns,” he said.
“Ocean acidification [from absorbed carbon emissions] is eating into the very basis of our ocean life; and sea level rise threatens to re-draw the global map at the expense of hundreds of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people,” he said.
The UN chief, who also called for action to curb piracy and irregular sea migration, said he hoped for progress towards a legally binding framework to combat “runaway climate change” at a UN conference in Doha in November.
However, action could also be taken now.
Ban said the Compact was aimed at “improving the health of the oceans” and strengthening their management through an action plan to be overseen by a high-level advisory group.
This would be made up of senior policymakers, scientists and ocean experts, representatives from the private sector and civil society and leaders of the UN organizations involved.
The UN chief said his initiative would also support implementation of the Law of the Sea treaty, which came into force in 1994.
He called the treaty one of the world’s “most significant legal instruments” and a tool for sustainable development which all nations should ratify.
“It contributes to international peace and security, the equitable and efficient use of ocean resources, the protection and preservation of the marine environment and the realization of a just and equitable economic order,” he said.
The US is the only major power not to have signed the convention. Republicans in the US Senate contend it would undermine US sovereignty and are blocking ratification.
“The world’s oceans are key to sustaining life on the planet,” Ban said in his introduction to the Oceans Compact.
Among other objectives, the Compact aims to protect the world’s people from ocean degradation and natural hazards such as tsunamis, from over-fishing and from pollution by land and sea activities.
It calls for countries most at risk from rising sea levels to develop plans to mitigate the threat, and for vulnerable regions to have tsunami warning systems.
By 2025, all countries should set national targets to curb nutrients, marine debris and wastewater.
The Compact calls for renewed efforts to curb illegal fishing, rebuild fish stocks and halt the spread of invasive alien species.
By 2020, it says, at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas should be subject to conservation measures.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS