Team Malizia calls to action for ocean protection in high-level panel debate
by Team Malizia 26 May 2024 10:58 PDT
Preserving Our High Seas: A Call to Action for Ocean Protection panel debate in New York © Marie Lefloch / Team Malizia
This Thursday, Team Malizia and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment co-organised a panel debate within the sailing team's Ocean conference series with high-level speakers such as oceanographer Sylvia Earle on the urgency to protect the High Seas.
While competing in the toughest offshore races, Team Malizia is dedicated to raising awareness about Ocean protection and inspiring ambitious climate action. To further their A Race We Must Win - Climate Action Now! mission, Boris Herrmann's team hosts sustainability panel debates in the harbour cities where the races start and finish, bringing together experts and advocates to highlight the importance of preserving the environment. Yesterday's Ocean Conference was a particular highlight for the team, as high-level speakers such as world renowned oceanographer, explorer, and Ocean ambassador Sylvia Earle, skipper Boris Herrmann, experts, and ocean advocates participated in a passionate debate on the topic Preserving Our High Seas: A Call to Action for Ocean Protection.
The event, which took place on Thursday evening at the German House in New York, was co-organised by Team Malizia and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment. It was hosted by the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in New York and endorsed by United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Almost a hundred guests attended the panel debate, which was streamed live on Team Malizia's YouTube channel and is now available to watch as a replay.
The Ocean covers about two-thirds of the surface of our planet and houses up to 80% of all life on Earth. Many are familiar with coastal ecosystems such as mangroves or kelp forests, but almost half of the planet is actually considered as the High Seas. These vast areas comprise almost 95% of the Ocean's volume and are some of the most biologically productive in the world. They are home to an enormous diversity of marine life, from the surface to the deep sea, with countless species yet to be discovered. The High Seas play a key role in regulating our global climate, and the seabed sequesters tremendous amounts of carbon.
However, the High Seas are under significant threat. The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and pollution are putting massive pressures on marine life. More recent threats are also looming on the horizon, such as deep-sea mining of raw materials. Moreover, the High Seas belong to no single nation and they are therefore vulnerable to the increasing pressures by some to exploit the resources in this last wild frontier.
Yesterday's panel event shed light on why the High Seas are so important, and explored what can be done to better understand and protect them. The debate focussed particularly on the United Nations agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), also referred to as the High Seas Treaty. The text was finalised during an intergovernmental conference at the UN on 4 March 2023 and adopted on 19 June 2023. Greenpeace called the High Seas Treaty as "the biggest conservation victory ever". Its main achievement is the new possibility of creating marine protected areas in international waters. By doing so, the agreement now makes it possible to protect 30% of the Ocean by 2030 and serves as a step towards protecting the ecosystems that store carbon in sediments.
"I must admit, when I was a young sailor, I never thought so much about the Ocean below me", said Boris Herrmann during the panel debate. "I learned everything about the colours of the sea and shapes of the waves, but it was only much later that I got really fascinated by it when a scientist told me that the Ocean is the air conditioning system of the Earth. This vast area which reaches incredible depths absorbs 90% of the planet's excess heat, and slows the effects of climate change on land and in the atmosphere dramatically."
The Team Malizia skipper added: "I've spent my life on the High Seas, and as a sailor, I am witnessing climate change on a global scale. I've sailed through the Northeast Passage, which was only possible because there was barely any ice left. With the warming of Antarctica and stronger prevailing winds in the Southern Ocean, ice breaks off earlier in the southern summer season and drifts further north. This leads race organisers to push the ice exclusion zones further north, which makes our route longer. And I see increasing amounts of sargassum seaweed in the Atlantic and especially in the Caribbean. The changes are very much visible, even in the High Seas."
"There are minerals in the deep sea, which have been gathering in manganese nodules", explained Sylvia Earle. "The illusion is that those are just dead stones. They're not. They're formed from biological processes around something alive or something that was alive, like a shark's tooth or a little bit of a shell. And layer by layer, over hundreds of thousands, millions of years they became something the size of my fist. We're not going to restore that in any reasonable period of time. So we need to really think carefully: Is it really something we need? And if so, shouldn't we be really careful? Right now, we have the best chance for protection of the High seas, of life in the High seas, of the land, and the deep sea. Bravo to those countries like Germany and France that hit the pause button on mining the deep sea. The precautionary principle should apply here. We need to know more if ever we'll know enough to justify tearing up for short-term gain something that we will never replace from the deep sea."
"We don't know much about the deep sea and its ecosystems", noted Dr Ingo Narberbaus from the German Ministry for the Environment. "What we do know is that there are thriving ecosystems down there, that we have a wealth of species living in extreme conditions. But how do they function? How do they interact with each other? What is the role of deep-sea ecosystems in the global climate system? With this many open questions, Germany took the position to call for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining and doesn't want to support any permits at this stage."
Farah Obaidullah, Ocean advocate and founder of The Ocean and Us, said: "If one country starts mining, we are opening the floodgates to all countries to start mining. And this is terrifying. The deep sea is the cradle of life, the Ocean is the world's largest carbon sink. We know from studies on bottom fisheries that if we start disturbing the seabed, we risk releasing that carbon back into the water column and destroying ancient habitats. I have dedicated the last four years to securing a moratorium, if not a ban on deep-sea mining in the High seas. And when I started this work four years ago, there was no country, I think, speaking out against deep-sea mining. We now have 25 countries calling for a pause or a moratorium or even a ban. This is encouraging but not enough, and definitely not quick enough."
"Growing up in Hawaii and coming from a scientific background, I spent a lot of time in the Ocean, scuba diving, and exploring reefs", said Lela DeVine, Youth Spokesperson High Seas Alliance & EarthEcho. "One of the things that I noticed was the coral bleaching events that were occurring within a drivable distance of my home. As I was working in a lab, one of the things that I noticed was the gap between what was happening in the lab and the public. Amazing discoveries about the Ocean were being published in scientific journals, but no one was actually talking about it or bringing it out to the community. That's how I started with scientific storytelling and became a youth spokesperson. The number of people in my community that know about the High Seas Treaty has been increasing over time, which shows the importance of advocacy and science communication."
The panellists agreed on the importance of connecting people to the Ocean and communicating in an emotionally impactful way. "Right now, the magnitude of our ignorance is the biggest problem that faces the way forward", concluded Sylvia Earle. "The deeper we go in the Ocean, the less we know, but the more new discoveries we're finding. It's the Wild West in the High seas. The governance has been a long time coming, but now that we know what we didn't know before, we're better prepared than ever to look at these issues, at our impact on Ocean life, and why it matters to climate and to our survival. Even with a mask and a snorkel, we can now see things that we couldn't years ago. So let's all take the plunge."
Team Malizia's A Race We Must Win - Climate Action Now! mission is only possible due to the strong and long-lasting commitment from its seven main partners: Hapag-Lloyd, Schütz, the Yacht Club de Monaco, EFG International, Zurich Group Germany, Kuehne+Nagel, and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company. These partners band behind Team Malizia to support its campaign, each of them working towards projects in their own field to innovate around climate solutions.
Speakers:
- Ambassador Thomas Zahneisen, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations
- Boris Herrmann, Team Malizia skipper
- Miguel de Serpa Soares, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Counsel
- Dr Sylvia Earle, Oceanographer, Explorer and Ocean Ambassador
- Farah Obaidullah, Ocean Advocate, Founder of The Ocean and Us
- Bud Darr, Executive VP Maritime Policy and Government at MSC Group
- Lela DeVine, Youth Spokesperson High Seas Alliance & EarthEcho
- Dr Ingo Narberhaus, German Ministry for the Environment
- Moderated by Cornelius Eich, Team Malizia