Al Gore has urged Ireland to deliver on “pledges” to protect our seas and help “solve the climate crisis”.
His rallying call rang out at Cork City Hall where delegates from around the world gathered to discuss the proposed Marine Protected Areas Bill on World Oceans Day.
While New Yorkers struggled to breathe under a blanket of smoke, the former US Presidential candidate told those gathered in the ‘Rebel city’ if political will is difficult to muster to remember “political will itself is a renewable resource and no people are better able to renew it than the people of Ireland”.
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“Everyday we are continuing to pump 162 million tonnes of global warming pollution - the greenhouse gases - into the atmosphere as if the atmosphere was an open sewer,” added Mr Gore in a special video message.
"The amount of extra heat trapped by the accumulated global warming pollution in the sky right now is equal to the heat that would be released by the explosion of six hundred thousand first generation atomic bombs exploding on the earth every single day.
“Now, where does that heat go, we feel it ourselves, but ultimately 93% of that extra heat we’re trapping goes into the ocean.”
And he says the results, which we see “every night on the TV news is like a nature eye through the book of revelation”.
"That brings me to Ireland, with 10 times more national territory as sea surrounding Ireland then the territory you have on land - Ireland has an outsized need to protect and steward the health of your surrounding waters.
"The actions we take now will determine whether or not we are going to leave our children and grandchildren with a liveable future and whether we can preserve the lives of the millions of species that are at risk.
“The seas around Ireland have helped to sustain Irish people for thousands of years,” he continued.
“But in order to continue supporting the Irish people these seas not only need to be protected but also managed in a sustainable way.
“With collaborative policy making that provides clear guidelines for Marine Protected Areas these unique ecosystems can continue to thrive alongside the people and the businesses that depend on them.”
Ireland has a marine area around 10 times the size of its land mass.
The proposed MPA Bill aims to protect 30% of that area, as promised at COP15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal in December, with strict protections in place for 10%.
Minister Malcolm Noonan, who has led that drive, says his team are on track to bring the full draft bill before cabinet before the summer recess and that it will work for the conservation of Ireland’s marine environment as well as its resources.
Addressing those gathered in Cork for the Fair Seas conference he said it couldn’t have been set in a better city, “where the relationship with humans and nature is playing out as it has done for a thousand years”.
“Grey seals inhabit the estuarine channels behind you, otters make home for their young here [and] Atlantic salmon swim past the building in which you now sit,” he added.
“These all serve as a reminder of the value of marine biodiversity and its vulnerability to the impacts of our activities.
“The science is clear - the triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution are the existential threats of our time.
“Ireland is in the final stages of developing modern new primary legislation for the designation and effective management of national marine protected areas.”
Throughout the day there were repeated calls for a ban on all bottom trawling in marine protected areas around Ireland.
Cork man, Brian McSharry, is Head of Group, Biodiversity and Ecosystems at European Environment Agency which was set up after the Chernobyl disaster and says he “can’t find any marine protected areas where bottom trawling does not happen”.
“This is the problem - we have conflicting policies... they are all telling us to do different things.
“Bottom trawling fishing is not acceptable in any marine protected area - the science is very clear on this.”
Canadian professor and Tyler Award winner, Dr Rashid Sumaila, says if business as usual continues we “can end up with a dead ocean where there is hardly any life”.
“That would be catastrophic - fish actually sequester a lot of carbon.”
He also said bottom trawling needs to stop and called for work with fishers to find a better way.
Cork woman and the World Bank’s Global Director of Environment, Natural Resources and the Blue Economy, Valerie Hickey, told the conference there are 260 million fisheries jobs world wide - jobs Chat GPT can’t take away.
Dr Hickey praised Fair Seas for thinking about the bigger picture with stakeholder engagement and quantifying what money is needed and how it should come from Government, International public finance and private finance.
“The private sector benefits from a healthy ocean, so they need to help pay for it as well.
“We cannot put the cost of protecting marine areas on those least able to carry them.”
National Inshore Fishermen’s Association co-chair, Kieran Healy, said he welcomed Dr Hickey’s “comforting words”.
He told us his colleagues “have a few fears and a lot of questions about MPAs”.
“A lot of those would come from ignorance - in the education sense rather than the derogatory sense,” he added.
“The more information they get, the more informed they are and maybe they might think a bit differently - look a bit more long term whereas at the moment they are just worried about losing income.”
On the issue of bottom trawling, he said their group “wouldn’t have a lot engaging in bottom trawling... but I would say they would be able to put strong arguments to be allowed to continue - using lighter gear [and] are able to go to the same places each year”.
“It’s a conversation to be had.”
Three-quarters (74%) of people who took part in a new Red C Poll agree protection and restoration of marine wildlife populations and their habitats must be a priority for the government.
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