President Donald Trump‘s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accordance now constructs the U.S. the” main threat to Mother Earth ,” Bolivian President Evo Morales charged Monday at the start of the United Nations’ first ocean conference.
Morales called the U.S. one of the world’s” main polluters .” In opting to exit the Paris Agreement, he mentioned, it is” denying science, becoming your backs on multilateralism and attempting to deny a future to upcoming generations .” That” has induced it the main threat to Mother Earth and to life itself .”
While Morales pointedly attacked the U.S. in his speech at U.N. headquarters in New York City, other leaders expressed strong support of the Paris accord — and sounded the alarm on the deteriorating health of the world’s oceans.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told representatives of about 200 countries in the General Assembly that oceans are the” lifeblood of the world” and” under threat as ever been .”
” Conserving our oceans and using them sustainably is preserving life itself ,” he added. The seas are in crisis due to pollution, global warming and overfishing, Guterres advised , noting that plastics threaten to outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050.
” We must put aside short-term national gain to prevent long-term global calamity ,” he cautioned, and he advocated a” new framework” of nations working together to protect the oceans.
Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose country is hosting the five-day meeting with Fiji, told:” We know what needs to be done. We know the ocean is broken .”
She noted that the oceans are now” 30 percent more acidic than in pre-industrial periods, big predatory fish stocks have declined by[ up to] 90 percent, the surface waters are get warmer[ and in] some areas there are more microplastics than plankton .”
Micronesia President Peter Christian told Pacific islanders fear that the ocean has been left the insurmountable task of healing itself after being used as” a dumping ground for industrial waste” and to absorb other pollution.
In an apparent dig at the Trump administration, Christian accentuated the best interests of the Paris Agreement, adding:” While some may continue to deny man’s culpability for the damaging effects of climate change on islands and islanders … no human , no island , no village and no nation can deny that litter in our oceans is of man’s own doing[ and] human must clean up his mess .”
Protection of the world’s oceans to benefit present and future generations is one of the targets of the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for sustainable development goals, adopted two years ago.
Some guidelines to deal with the problem include establishing more marine sanctuaries, cleaning up plastic pollution, managing fisheries more carefully and reducing pollution.
The U.N. will issue a “call to action” Friday with recommendations and voluntary commitments from nations.
Lovin told Reuters in an interview last week that the U.S. did not support the” strong language” of the proposed draft call to action.
” I envision I can safely say that the United States has not been very keen on strong language on climate change ,” she mentioned.” We are not prepared to leave that[ language] out. That’s really fundamental. The impacts of climate change are almost immeasurable .”
