9 June 2025 - With the Mediterranean glittering in the background, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Secretary-General Ant¨®nio Guterres opened the Third United Nations Ocean Conference on Monday, delivering a blunt indictment of humanity¡¯s fractured relationship with the sea.
¡°The ocean is the ultimate shared resource,¡± he told delegates gathered at the port of Nice. ¡°But we are failing it.¡±
Oceans, he warned, are absorbing 90 per cent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions and buckling under the strain: overfishing, rising temperatures, plastic pollution, acidification. Coral reefs are dying. Fish stocks are collapsing. Rising seas, he said, could soon ¡°submerge deltas, destroy crops, and swallow coastlines ¡ª threatening many islands¡¯ survival.¡±
Call for stewardship
More than 50 Heads of State and Government took part in the opening ceremony, including Brazilian President Luiz In¨¢cio Lula da Silva and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ¡ª a show of political force underscoring the summit¡¯s weight.
In total, over 120 countries are participating in the five-day gathering, known by the shorthand , signaling a growing recognition that ocean health is inseparable from climate stability, food security, and global equity.
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is co-hosting the summit alongside Costa Rica, followed with a forceful appeal for science, law, and multilateral resolve.
¡°The abyss is not for sale, any more than Greenland is for sale, any more than Antarctica or the high seas are for sale,¡± he declared. ¡°If the Earth is warming, the ocean is boiling.¡±
He insisted the fate of the seas could not be left to markets or opinion. ¡°The first response is therefore multilateralism,¡± Mr. Macron said. ¡°The climate, like biodiversity, is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of scientifically established facts.¡±
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles took the podium next, thanking Mr. Guterres for elevating the ocean on the global agenda, then shifting to a stark warning.
¡°The ocean is speaking to us ¡ª with bleached coral reefs, with storms, with wounded mangroves,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s no time left for rhetoric. Now is the time to act.¡±
Condemning decades of treating the ocean as an ¡°infinite pantry and global waste dump,¡± Mr. Chaves urged a shift from exploitation to stewardship.
¡°Costa Rica is a small country, but this change has started,¡± he said. ¡°We are now declaring peace with the ocean.¡±
Most notably, the Costa Rican leader called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters until science can adequately assess the risks ¡ª a position already backed by 33 countries, he noted.
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