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Prince William calls for urgent action to save world's oceans ‘diminishing before our eyes'
Prince William has issued an impassioned call for 'immediate action' to save the world's oceans, warning that ecosystems vital for humanity's survival are 'diminishing before our eyes'.
Stressing that 'healthy oceans are essential to all life on Earth', the Prince of Wales warned that 'we all stand to be impacted' by the destruction of ocean life.
In a speech to heads of state and other delegates at the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco, the future monarch insisted that – despite the threat presenting a challenge like none humanity has faced before – there 'remains time to turn this tide'.
But he warned that the 'clock is ticking', with bold action needed 'to protect and restore our planet'.
William addressed Sunday's forum in his role as founder of the Earthshot Prize, launched by the prince in 2020 with the aim of taking steps to tackle environmental problems within a decade.
World leaders were greeted by a blue carpet as they arrived at the event, with William meeting French president Emmanuel Macron, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and Costa Rica's president Rodrigo Chaves Robles.
The oceans generate half the world's oxygen, regulate the climate, and provide food for more than three billion people, William noted in his speech, which came ahead of the UN Ocean Conference, which begins in France on Monday.
But he warned: 'Rising sea temperatures, plastic pollution and overfishing are putting pressure on these fragile ecosystems, and on the people and communities who depend most upon them. What once seemed an abundant resource is diminishing before our eyes.
'We all stand to be impacted, and we are all responsible for change, both negative and positive.'
The heir to the British throne hailed the target agreed at the UN Biodiversity Summit in 2022 aiming to protect at least 30 per cent of the world's land and sea by 2030 as 'our best chance at reversing the damage done to our planet and restoring its wellbeing'.
'But the clock is ticking,' he said. '2030 is fast approaching, and only 17 per cent of land and just 3 per cent of the ocean has been fully protected. If we are to reach our goal, we urgently need to take bold action to protect and restore our planet.
'This challenge is like none we have faced before. But I remain an optimist. I believe that urgency and optimism have the power to bring about the action needed to change the course of history.'
Having filmed a conversation with Sir David Attenborough last month at the Royal Festival Hall, he praised the 99-year-old's new documentary Oceans – released on Sunday – as making 'the most compelling argument for immediate action that I have ever seen'.
He added: 'Watching human activity reduce beautiful sea forests to barren deserts at the base of our oceans is simply heartbreaking. For many, it is an urgent wake-up call to just what is going on in our oceans. But it can no longer be a matter of 'out of sight, out of mind'. The need to act to protect our ocean is now in full view.'
'The ocean is under enormous threat, but it can revive itself. But only if we act now,' said the prince.
On Saturday, William's office released a clip from his recent conversation with Sir David, in which the veteran broadcaster tells him: 'The thing which I am appalled by, when I first saw the shots that were taken for this film are what we have done to the deep ocean floor.
'If you did anything remotely like it on land, everybody would be up in arms.'
Referring to the words of Sir David in his closing remarks, William told the auditorium of 1,800 people on Sunday: 'Halfway through this decisive decade, I call on all of you to think big in your actions.
'Let us act together with urgency and optimism while we still have the chance. For the future of our planet, for the future generations, we must listen to the words of Sir David Attenborough: 'If we save the sea, we save our world.''
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The Independent
32 minutes ago
- The Independent
Prince William warns oceans are ‘diminishing before our eyes' in Monaco speech
Prince William, speaking at Monaco's Blue Economy and Finance Forum on Sunday (8 June), has warned world leaders about the oceans ' "alarming state." In a speech delivered to the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco on Sunday (8 June), the Prince of Wales said life on the ocean floor was "diminishing before our eyes". He stressed: 'They need our help." ' What once seemed, an abundant resource is diminishing before our eyes. We all stand to be impacted, and we are all responsible for change, both negative and positive.'
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
An end to deep sea dredging
Sir David Attenborough has condemned the damage inflicted on the ocean floor by trawling, calling it 'unspeakably awful'. He was speaking to the Prince of Wales ahead of this week's UN conference on the oceans in Nice which is seeking international support for a new High Seas Treaty. Prince William backed this up in a speech in Monaco, calling the devastation 'heartbreaking'. The destruction of the deep ocean by dredging has been known for decades but it never becomes a major political issue because the impact is unseen. In a new documentary, Ocean, Sir David highlights the potential damage to marine life from some fishing practices, like bottom trawling. Were the same desecration to be inflicted on, say, the Maasai Mara or some other visible and valued eco-system the world reaction would stop it. As Sir David said: 'If you did anything remotely like it on land, everybody would be up in arms.' The UN treaty was signed two years ago and needs to be ratified by 60 countries to take legal effect. It would offer marine protected area (MPA) status to 30 per cent of the world's oceans to let them recover. So far just 32 have done so, including France and Spain – but not the UK, which still allows bottom dredging in MPAs around our shores. In a bid to 'reset' relationships with the EU, French and Spanish trawlers will be allowed access to UK waters for a longer post-Brexit period, a decision that has been denounced in fishing communities as a 'betrayal'. But why should French and Spanish boats be allowed to carry out trawling practices in British waters that their own governments do not want to see in their own? The UK Government has dragged its feet over ratifying this treaty. It needs to get on with it.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Monday briefing: How the work of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira carries on, three years after their killing
Good morning. Last week marked the third anniversary of the disappearance of the longtime Guardian contributor Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest. They were found dead 10 days later, murdered as they tried to warn the world about the Amazon's destruction. In the time since, the environmental defenders and journalists who knew them have tried to secure their legacy, through projects to train a new generation of Indigenous activists to protect their home from organised crime and industrial deforestation – and through reporting. On Thursday, as part of that project, the first two episodes of a new Guardian podcast, Missing in the Amazon, were published; the third went up this morning. The series, an astonishingly evocative and diligent piece of work, is presented by Dom's friend and Guardian colleague, Tom Phillips. For today's newsletter, I spoke to Tom about the series – how it came about, the wrenching toll and deep consolations of putting it together, and the picture of the future of the rainforest that it presents. Here are the headlines. US politics | Tensions flared in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday as hundreds of US national guard troops were deployed by Donald Trump as thousands took to the streets to protest against an immigration crackdown. Teargas and 'less-lethal munitions' were used by police to disperse huge crowds, who surrounded civic buildings and blocked a freeway. California governor Gavin Newsome accused Trump of manufacturing a crisis. Israel-Gaza | The activists sending an aid ship into Gaza carrying climate activist Greta Thunberg accused Israel of forcibly intercepting the vessel and confiscating its cargo. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said the passengers would be shown video of the 7 October attacks. UK economy | Rachel Reeves has been locked in a standoff over the policing and council budgets just days before this week's spending review, which is set to give billions to the NHS, defence and technology. Culture | Ministers have asked the British Council to draw up spending plans which would force it to close in as many as 60 countries, sources have told the Guardian. Environment | Environmental groups have welcomed government proposals to ban the destructive fishing practice known as bottom trawling in half of England's protected seas. A few weeks after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing, Tom sat down in Rio de Janeiro with João Laet, a photographer with deep experience of the Amazon who had also known Dom, and talked about what to do next. 'We did what journalists do,' he said. 'We decided to just report, to carry on, to do even more of it. A couple of weeks later, we were back in a different part of the Amazon – and we've been doing it ever since.' The podcast has been one of the centrepieces of Tom's part of that work. Over the last three years, he has travelled thousands of miles through the jungle by helicopter, plane, boat and on foot in an effort to understand what happened, and to shed new light on the stories that the two men thought were so important. The series presents a painstaking, beautifully attentive portrait of Dom and Bruno, and the powerful investigative thread of the search for their killers; meanwhile, the story of the violence done to the Amazon by organised crime and industrial deforestation, and the Indigenous people fighting to protect it, plays out in vivid detail. 'We wanted to make sure their lives and legacies were properly remembered,' Tom said. 'I hope they'd be proud of it.' Where threats to the Amazon stand today When Dom and Bruno went missing, the far-right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil, and widely viewed as having nurtured the climate in which their attackers could feel they had impunity. Bolsonaro's defeat to the leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva later that year was a genuine turning point for the Amazon, Tom said. 'Lula was accompanied at his inauguration by Raoni, one of Brazil's most revered Indigenous leaders. He appointed Marina Silva, a hugely respected environmentalist, as his environment minister. He gave Bruno's widow, Beatriz Matos, a top job in a new ministry for Indigenous peoples. He started putting resources into the environmental agency, so it could crack down on deforestation and crime. So all of that is very good news.' At the same time, he said, 'the fundamental fact is that lots of things haven't changed. Deforestation has come down massively – but there is still a great deal of destruction going on. You have a right-wing congress which is trying to undermine Indigenous rights and environmental protection. Organised crime has grown in the last few years.' And there is the prospect of a far-right successor to Bolsonaro prevailing in next year's presidential election. In the Javari valley, where Dom and Bruno were killed, Tom said 'all the activists I know still receive threats – every time I come home, I wonder if I'm going to see those people again.' He points to one bleak symbol in particular: a floating federal police base deployed to the valley, called New Era, which has subsequently been withdrawn. How Dom and Bruno's friends and allies responded to their deaths In a story published last week, and further explored later in the podcast series, Tom describes the extraordinary journey he and João Laet took deep into some of the most inaccessible territory in the Javari valley alongside members of the Indigenous patrol group that Bruno helped to found. The group, named Evu, works to train activists to protect the rainforest and rivers from poachers, fishers, miners and drug traffickers; against just a dozen members in 2021, there are 120 today, an expansion driven by the determination to secure Bruno's legacy. 'These are the same people without whom Dom and Bruno might never have been found,' Tom said. 'Three years ago, I was blown away by their skill, their dedication, their persistence. And now they're not just stepping up in the region, but exporting the model to other parts of the Amazon and Latin America.' The work is astonishingly gruelling: Tom describes joining the team as they carried two aluminium canoes on their shoulders on a hike of 100km in six days through dense rainforest. At the end of their journey, they provided the canoes – and training – to the last of their six mobile teams. Since coming back, 'I haven't been able to put a pair of shoes on for a week,' Tom said ruefully. 'My left knee isn't really bending properly. I fell in the river and lost my glasses. It's been slightly exhausting, but a privilege.' Meanwhile, a group of journalists led by Guardian global environment editor Jonathan Watts and Dom's widow Alessandra Sampaio has been at work on the project that Dom was engaged in when he died – the completion of a book called How to Save the Amazon, in which Bruno is an essential character. 'No reader should be in any doubt that these pages have been stained by blood,' Dom's co-authors write. 'The killers blasted a gaping wound in this book that is far too great for any infusion of solidarity to heal.' 'It's all part of the same project,' Tom said. 'I got my copy in Portuguese the other day. It was an incredibly uplifting thing to receive – this feeling that in some sense, Dom's mission had been accomplished.' Has the crime been solved? In July 2022, three men were charged with the murder of Dom and Bruno: Amarildo da Costa Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima, who confessed to the killing but have argued that they acted in self-defence; and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, who was accused of a lesser role, but who subsequently saw the charges dropped – though he is still under house arrest pending a possible new charge. But that left the question of why. In November last year, the alleged mastermind of the attack was charged with arming and funding those responsible. He was identified in Brazilian press reports as Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, a shadowy business person in the Javari Valley who has been accused of running an illegal poaching operation, money laundering, and drug smuggling, but never convicted. Others have been charged as accessories who helped to conceal the bodies. The fifth episode of the series will examine whether Dom and Bruno's deaths were the result of a wider conspiracy. Among Indigenous activists, 'There is a frustration that it has taken so long,' Tom said. 'There's a real worry that if the two fishers are convicted, it will just end there. People want to see proof of a real inclination from the authorities to dig into whether there were more powerful criminal figures behind the murders, and what they might reveal about the region's struggle with political and police corruption in a hugely important narco corridor for cocaine going from Peru to Europe.' What has it been like to tell Dom and Bruno's story? As he worked on the series, 'I thought a lot about the fact that Dom left his house one day for what he would not have seen as one of his most dangerous reporting trips, said goodbye, and never came back,' Tom said. 'So yes, it's been traumatic. But it's been therapeutic, too, to have the time and space to try to do this story justice.' There has been a deep poignancy in spending so much time talking to people about his friend – and even the parts of his story that were very far from the Amazon. 'We nearly always talked about our affection for Brazil, and the work of reporting here,' Tom said. But as the second episode of the series sets out, Dom had a whole other life in London in the 1990s, where he was editor of Mixmag, and a passionate connoisseur of dance music. 'I was only a teenager, but that was part of my world back then too,' Tom said. 'I really wish now that we had talked more about those days.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion As he says on the podcast, a thread runs through all of Dom's life, whether going toe-to-toe with a superstar DJ in a row over a coverline in the queue for Ministry of Sound or reporting deep in the Javari valley: 'The backbone, the commitment to his ideas. When Dom decided he cared about something, or that it really mattered, he went all-in. And in the end, that was what set him on the path to the Amazon.' After being told for decades that there was no market for her work, Bernardine Evaristo is now one of the most in-demand authors. I loved this interview with her, where she talks about how she's handled being thrust into the spotlight. Aamna Mercury prize-nominated singer Gwenno sings in Cornish and Welsh. She recently visited a school in Cornwall and used music to encourage the children to see Cornish as a living language. Katy Vans, newsletters team Labour's housebuilding agenda must prioritise social housing, writes Guardian columnist John Harris, warning that failing to build more council homes will deepen social decay and fuel dangerous right-wing forces. Aamna This fascinating essay by Alice Bolin argues for challenging the 'great man' theory of history … before our obsession with tech bros goes too far. Katy Looting and trafficking of Syria's antiquities has surged to unprecedented levels since rebels overthrew the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December, experts warn, putting the country's heritage further at risk. Aamna Tennis | Pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the sport, Carlos Alcaraz toppled the world No 1, Jannik Sinner, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) after five hours and 29 minutes to defend his French Open title in Paris. Cycling | Teenage prodigy Cat Ferguson came within a hair's breadth of executing a memorable overall win in her debut Tour of Britain, but was outsprinted by her rival Ally Wollaston at the climax of the final stage in Glasgow. Football | Thomas Tuchel has said his England players must accept his straight-talking criticisms if they are to advance to World Cup glory. The manager did not hold back after the lacklustre performance in the 1-0 qualifying win against Andorra in Barcelona on Saturday, questioning their attitude and body language. The Guardian leads with events in the US: 'Trump deploys national guard on LA streets in dramatic escalation'. The Financial Times reports 'Business chiefs head for Capitol Hill to fight Trump's foreign investment tax'. Looking ahead to the spending review, the Times has 'Cash boost to fight crime', while the Telegraph says 'Policing is broken, officers warn Reeves'. The i reports 'PIP benefit cuts may be softened to quash dissent against Reeves'. The Mail leads with an investigation, under the headline 'Visa scam that makes mockery of PM's pledge on migration', while the Sun looks at the cost of migrant hotels with 'InnSane'. The Mirror leads with 'Donor blood red alert'. Australia's mushroom murder trial Justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci talks through the trial that has gripped Australia – of the woman accused of murdering three of her relatives with poisoned mushrooms over a family meal. Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett's cartoons, the best Saturday magazine journalism and an exclusive look behind the scenes A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad The Scout Association has introduced a Money Skills badge to help young people gain practical financial literacy skills. Guardian Money observed members of a group of explorer scouts in London. 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