And we can win the race if we cooperate. Let’s all become the champions the ocean needs. The UN leader said, “Let’s end the ocean disaster and protect this priceless blue treasure for our children and grandchildren.”

The Secretary-General was speaking from the Ocean Science Center Mindelo in So Vicente. This cutting-edge building houses advanced laboratories, electronics workshops, and massive marine research equipment, including deep-sea robots.

As the building greeted Summit attendees on Monday morning, it showed how much Cabo Verde is betting on improving the blue economy of the archipelago.

The Prime Minister saw how the ocean described a sensation of desire and melancholy as he peered through the enormous doors that opened onto the port. The same harbour allowed countless Cabo Verdeans to depart in pursuit of a better life.

Today, according to Ulisses Correia e Silva, “it symbolizes tourism, desalinated water, the blue economy, submarine fibre optic cables, renewable energy, biotechnology, aquaculture, the canning industry for export, a competence center, and naval events like the Ocean Race.”

“Survival is a question of the ocean”

According to Cristina Duarte, the UN’s Special Adviser on Africa, 99.3% of Cabo Verde’s territory is water because it is a chain of 10 islands off the Atlantic coast of West Africa.

From 2006 to 2016, Ms. Duarte, a Cabo Verdean, served as the nation’s Minister of Finance, Planning, and Public Administration. “We might be more aquatic than terrestrial organisms,” she speculated. The waters are essential to Cabo Verde’s life.

Because we must take from it for Cabo Verde to flourish, its conservation [must be done] from the perspective of managing a natural resource. Maintain it, but keep in mind that Cabo Verde relies on it as a resource for its economy, said Mrs. Duarte.

A race to the ocean

Every three to four years, since 1973, sailors have raced around the globe in the Ocean Race.

For the previous forty years, ships would see these islands off in the distance or rush into the middle of them, as ocean health advocate Danni Washington noted today at the Summit. Even if Cabo Verdeans occasionally came to their aid, the race had never stopped in the archipelago.

The nation hosted a stopover on Friday night, making it the first West African nation to do so in the competition’s history.

Richard Brisius, who was in charge of the competition, spoke at the summit and told the UN Secretary-General that all of the participants were committed to helping the oceans.

You have every Ocean Race competitor in your crew,” he remarked. We are concerned about protecting the ocean because we are “ocean people.”

Mr. Guterres praised “the incredible courage of women and men sailing this arduous six-month race around the world” for his part.

He said that it’s “especially encouraging” to know that each boat is equipped with specialized gear to collect scientific data to contribute to the future maintenance of a healthy ocean.

Risk to a valuable resource

The summit provided the UN Secretary-General with an opportunity to raise awareness that “the ocean is life.” Life is an ocean. The ocean is also tricky.

According to the UN chief, 35% of the world’s fish supplies are overfished, ocean temperatures are rising due to global warming, storm frequency and intensity are increasing, sea levels are rising, and coastal lands and aquifers are becoming more salinized.

While this is going on, Mr. Guterres noted, “toxic chemicals and millions of tonnes of plastic debris are flowing into coastal ecosystems, killing or harming fish, sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals, making their way into the food chain, and finally being ingested by us.”

According to UN predictions, there may be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.

“Super year” gave way to “super action”

In light of this, the Secretary-General does believe that the globe made some significant course corrections last year.

The UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon saw hundreds of new voluntary commitments and pledges from nations, and the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal saw nations agree to a target of protecting 30% of the land, water, coastal, and marine ecosystems by 2030. Among these advancements was the “historic agreement” in Nairobi to negotiate a globally binding treaty to control plastic pollution.

“Some have dubbed 2022 the super year’ for the ocean. But there is still much to be done. Guterres says that 2023 must be a year of “mega action” if the ocean crisis is to be fixed for good.

According to the UN chief, the world needs to take urgent action in four key areas: establishing sustainable maritime industries; providing significant aid to developing nations; winning the battle against climate change; and, finally, utilizing science, technology, and innovation on a previously unheard-of scale.

Guterres said this about the financial industry: “Poor countries are the victims of a morally bankrupt global financial system that was made by rich countries to help rich countries.”

“The system is laced with bias.” It consistently refuses to provide poor countries with the concessional financing and debt relief they require, particularly vulnerable middle-income countries and small island developing states like Cabo Verde, he added.

Mr. Guterres urged industries that depend on the ocean to follow the Ocean Race’s lead and cut their carbon footprints to fight climate change. He used the shipping industry as an example, saying that it had to promise to have net zero emissions by 2050 and show how it would do that.

As the event came to a close, the UN chief took part in a Relay4Nature ceremony and received a baton that will be passed from one ocean advocate to another as part of a symbolic appeal to world leaders to raise their goals for marine conservation dramatically.

Peter Thomson, the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, spearheaded the initiative. The “Nature Baton” was then passed to leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and celebrities like Jason Momoa. Boris Herrmann, the skipper of Team Malizia, took it from Alicante, Spain, on a boat to Cabo Verde.

The Secretary-General declared that he represented “a generation that has mostly failed the oceans” as he carried the recognizable baton.

Mr. Guterres said he was “very, very grateful” to be able to give it to a generation that he trusts to “reverse the wrongs that we did, rescue the oceans, defeat climate change, rescue the planet, and rescue us all” before presenting it to Odara dos Santos Brito, a student from Liceu Jorge Barbosa, in So Vicente.

The young Cabo Verdean didn’t flinch when he took the baton. She responded, “We accept that commitment.”