Alive / Oceans. “It has to be the right mission, at the right time,” says Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, apologized to the international audience, but decided that, in his city and in his country, he would begin by speaking in Portuguese and expressing his satisfaction at seeing this conference held in the Portuguese capital.

Guterres quoted a fragment of the poem “O Infante”, by Fernando Pessoa, to call for the union of all member states in the preservation of the oceans.

God wanted the earth to be all one,

May the sea unite, separate no more.”

In English, the UN Secretary General recalled that from space we see our blue planet, thanks to the oceans and that we take them for granted. And so we neglect attention.

António Guterres recalled that the sea level is rising, that corals are dying, that there are serious interferences in the food chain, that untreated sewage continues to reach the oceans and, of course, the problem of plastics – which, without effective measures, it could exceed the weight of fish in the ocean by 2050. That is why he urged those present to turn the tide.

We can’t have a healthy planet without a healthy ocean, Guterres said.

The Secretary General left four measures that he would like to see carried out:

1. Have ocean-related economies that are sustainable, whether in energy or in the extraction of food and other resources, because the ocean is the livelihood of millions of people.
2. See the ocean as a model for how we can solve global problems for the common good and scale those measures.
3. Protect the oceans and the people who depend on them from climate change.
4. Encourage all stakeholders, policymakers and civil society, in the recently launched early warning system initiative on impacts to the oceans. Guterres calls for “a voluntary commitment.”

The UN Secretary General ended his remarks in Swahili: “The ocean takes us anywhere.”

Watch the Ocean Conference live here.

After having officially declared the Conference of the Oceans open, the Secretary General of the United Nations takes the floor again. “We live in an oceanic emergency”, underlines António Guterres, calling for the protection of the oceans. The first part of his speech is in Portuguese, then he returns to English, a language that Marcelo also uses in his speech.

After Marcelo, it was the turn to talk about Uhuru Kenyatta. “We hope to hear solutions,” said the president of Kenya, a country that organizes the Ocean Conference together with Portugal.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa continues speaking and praises António Guterres: it is “an honor and a pleasure” to have the UN Secretary General present at the meeting, “a man of principles and convictions”, promoter of “peace and social justice”.

Portugal is what it is thanks to the oceans, says Marcelo. “Portugal is a platform between oceans, continents, cultures and civilizations”, adds the president, emphasizing that it has been in the past, in the present and will be in the future.

Returning to his initial idea, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa specifies that the meeting takes place in the “The right time, because the oceans are central to geopolitical power, health, economic resources, mobility, migration, scientific and technological development.” Remember that the conference had to be postponed due to various factors, such as the Covid-19 pandemic (the previous one took place five years ago in New York), ending up coinciding with the G7 Summit.

The President of the Portuguese Republic also stresses that the time is right, because we must make up for lost time and give hope a chance, before it is too late. “Politicians go, oceans stay.”

Guterres and Marcelo

“The oceans have existed for millions and millions of years”, long before man existed, and have continued to exist for “millions and millions of years”, as long as humanity “stops killing them”.

“It has to be the right mission at the right time.” This is how Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa summed up the importance of the meeting on the oceans that takes place this Monday in Portugal. Right at the beginning of his speech, the President of the Republic began by being affirmative. The Oceans conference is “the right conference, at the right time, with the right focus and the right UN Secretary General”.

António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, officially opened the Conference on the Oceans, the largest event ever dedicated to the subject.

This Monday, in Carcavelos, more than 7,000 people are expected, including representatives from 140 countries. The Lisbon meeting is the second edition of the conference, after the first one took place in New York five years ago.

On this occasion, the organization is in charge of Portugal and Kenya. The motto is “Save the oceans, protect the future”.

Good day,

We will be here to follow the Conference of the Oceans, which will take place this Monday in Lisbon.

This Monday morning, in an interview with the Lusa agency about the meeting, the environment minister warned that the Portuguese will have to get used to living with less water. The government, said Duarte Cordeiro, will apply “whatever restrictions are necessary” if the water begins to run out.

“It is not worth it, who promotes a certain type of investment or infrastructure, without taking into account that water is a scarce resource. And we do not have any kind of limitation to apply restrictions when necessary. That is what we have been doing,” said the minister, warning that whoever invests without taking into account the scarcity of water may have consequences. The most important thing, he assured him, is to have water for human consumption.

Also in an interview with Lusa, the leader of the Russian delegation – a presence that aroused much controversy – warned that the suspension of cooperation in the area of ​​climate or environmental protection could have a “catastrophic effect” for the planet and its recovery. . “It takes decades.”

“Suspending cooperation in the area of ​​climate or environmental protection will only impede progress in these areas. This could have a catastrophic effect on our planet and recovery could take decades,” said Ruslan Edelgeriyev.