As both countries will be co-hosts, the 2025 World Ocean Conference will take place in France, while the preparatory conferences for 2024 will take place in our country, possibly at the Convention Center, with broad participation from the UCR. The international delegation was headed by the special ambassador of the French Government for the next World Ocean Conference, Mr. Olivier PoivreD’Arvor.
The second World Ocean Conference of the United Nations Organization (UN) was held at the end of June 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal, and was co-organized by that European country and the African nation of Kenya. At the end of said Conference, the governments of Costa Rica and France agreed to jointly co-organize the third World Ocean Conference.
Visit to CIMAR-UCR
To find out about our country’s achievements in the conservation of the seas and to start organizing the next Conference, French President Emmanuel Macron sent Mr. Olivier PoivreD’Arvor to our country as special ambassador, accompanied by the Messrs. Ashok Adicéam, coordinator for France for the 2025 Ocean Conference of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, as well as Mr. Fabrice Place, counselor of the French Embassy in Costa Rica, and Ms. RomanePrigent, advisor to the Directorate of the United Nations and International Organizations of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France.
The French delegation visited CIMAR on October 21st, 2022, in the company of Mrs. Mariamalia Jiménez Coto, from the Foreign Policy Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of our country. At the UCR, the delegation was received by Dr. Eddy Gómez Ramírez, deputy director of CIMAR and by Dr. Juan José Alvarado Barrientos, CIMAR researcher and director of the Postgraduate Program in Integrated Management of Tropical Coastal Areas (GIACT), among others.
As Dr. Gómez explained during the meeting, the CIMAR scientists presented a summary of the Center’s research areas, as well as an account of the UCR’s support initiatives for the Costa Rican State in terms of aquatic sciences and conservation of their resources. The different international cooperation initiatives of the UCR with France and other countries in Europe and America were also shown. In the same way, the progress of GIACT -in terms of double degree initiatives with homologous programs in France- were announced.
Finally, the project of the Cousteau Observatory for the Coasts and Seas of Central America (OCCA) was exposed to the visitors, with the intention of its relaunch in the year 2024, prior to the Oceans Conference in 2025. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Ambassador PoivreD’Arvor recognized very positively the work of CIMAR, and in particular the close academic and research relationship that this Center and the UCR have with France.
In this sense, and with a view to organizing the World Ocean Conference in 2025, co-organized by Costa Rica and France, the delegations of both countries valued the importance of science for decision-making and actions that contribute to addressing the challenges facing the ocean, and the role of universities and research centers in this task. After the visit to the UCR, the international delegation went to the Presidential House to meet with government authorities.
Background
The first world conference on the Oceans was held for the first time in 2017 to promote the advancement of UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, which promotes the conservation and sustainable use of the ocean, seas, and marine resources. In June of the current year, the second UN World Ocean Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, which was attended by more than 6,000 participants, including 24 heads of state and government, and more than 2,000 representatives of civil society and academics.
The participating people raised their voices for urgent and concrete actions in order to fully and promptly address the serious problems that threaten our oceans and marine resources. Among the most serious problems affecting the seas and oceans are overfishing, habitat destruction, the accelerated loss of marine biodiversity, the rise in sea level with erosive impacts on the coastline, and oil spills.
This is due to several factors. Among them, 90% of continental pollution reaches coastal areas mainly in the form of plastics, whose residues can be found in the digestive tracts of organisms such as fish. Other factors are ocean acidification, coastal eutrophication, the increasingly frequent and intense proliferation of harmful algal blooms or red tides, and global warming.
All of this impacts marine ecosystems. For these reasons, Sustainable Development Goal 14: “Health of the Oceans” calls on the scientific community to generate important information to feed various indicators in the comprehensive assessment of the oceans and thus improve their health, in order to achieve a true revolution in the sustainability of the oceans.
