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Malcolm Shick of Orono is an emeritus professor of zoology and oceanography at the University of Maine. His book, “Where Corals Lie: A Natural and Cultural History,” presents coral reefs as canaries in the coal mine of global climate change.
In early June, Nice, France, hosted a series of ocean-focused events. Uniquely, the One Ocean Science Congress (OOSC) — a high-level scientific meeting — was organized to occur just before Costa Rica and France convened the Third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), a high-level political meeting. The OOSC was tasked with providing evidence-based recommendations to heads of state and government. The timing deliberately allowed for “scientific knowledge to inform diplomatic negotiations.”
The congress drew more than 2,150 ocean scientists from private and governmental institutions from 113 countries who addressed the general priority of a healthy and sustainable global ocean — One Ocean — that shows continuing evidence of decline. Discussions focused on specific themes: fisheries management; establishment of new marine protected areas and promotion of marine biodiversity, including the interwoven fact of climate change; deep-sea mining; pollution (including plastics); increased inclusiveness in the Blue Economy; more financing for sustainable development goals for effective international ocean action; and the promotion of ocean science and literacy.
Timely information from ocean-science research was imparted in more than 500 oral presentations, 620 posters, and 33 round-table discussions involving global experts, including a few U.S. federal scientists among the larger group. Ten considered recommendations were presented to the heads of state and government the day before UNOC3 to “help shape the agenda rather than merely react to it.”
The latter gathered 175 UN member states, 64 heads of state and government, 28 heads of UN, intergovernmental, and international organizations, 115 ministers, and 12,000 delegates. NPR reported from Nice a lack of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other U.S. government agencies attending UNOC3. In lieu of an official U.S. delegation, Ed Russo, chairman of the administration’s Environmental Advisory Task Force, attended as a government observer. The dearth of U.S. federal scientists was especially unfortunate because they have long led the research behind the issues under consideration.
Following five days of debate, the UNOC3 delegates issued the Nice Declaration, incorporating some of the OOSC participants’ recommendations. It was adopted by acclamation on June 13 and presented to the United Nations General Assembly for formal endorsement. On June 30, the vote was 162 nations in favor, one against, and no abstentions. The one negative vote was cast by the United States. That is, the lone dissenting vote was by a nation that, despite having marine scientists at the forefront of the research, did not send those experts to the international forum where such research was discussed and debated, and recommendations drafted for the UN General Assembly.
In a conversation with me, Maestro Lucas Richman, conductor of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and composer of the environmentally and politically informed orchestral and choral symphony “The Warming Sea” (which premiered in Orono in 2022), reacted to the vote: “I’m extremely disappointed to learn of the ‘no’ vote given by the U.S. to the Nice Declaration — really?! Why is it that every other country in the world seems interested in preserving a future for our children except for the U.S.?”
Other readers of this newspaper who care about the state and fate of the ocean should be equally appalled by the U.S. vote. National ambassadors did see devils in the details but nonetheless exhibited remarkable unanimity in endorsing the Nice Declaration.
The negative vote on the Nice Declaration by the U.S. leadership reflects its broader displeasure with the underlying 17 sustainable development goals adopted by all UN member nations in 2015 with the aim of “peace and prosperity for people and the planet,” at odds with the U.S. administration’s “America First” foreign policy.
Such a rejection by the U.S. in the face of renewed hopeful consensus regarding sustainable development of the ocean continues its growing international isolation, engendered by what I see as a willfully ignorant administration that disdains climate and ocean science and its practitioners, disparages evidence-based education and policy making, and deposes our meritocracy for a pejorocracy, a government of the worst. A moral realignment of such misguided national priorities is called for while there is still the chance to repair our national fabric and restore our international credibility.
