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The largest ocean protection act in history

Source: Virgin Unite. 

By Diego Jimenez, Partnerships Lead, Only One.

Have you seen news about the alarming loss of ice in the Arctic and Antarctica? Have you read about coral reefs turned a ghostly shade of white? Are you aware of the dangers facing mangrove forests? Has any of this sparked an urgency to take action, but you aren’t sure what to do or how to do it? Well, you’re not alone.

While the world grapples with the undeniable reality of accelerating climate change and declining ocean health, figuring out how each of us can immediately contribute to solutions remains challenging.

©Cristina Mittermeier

This is why we, Only One, decided to launch a new home for solutions and community action – working to protect and restore the ocean, tackle the climate crisis, and help fuel the movement for a more just and equitable planet.

The ocean is the heart of our blue planet, but due to human activities, it is now being thrown out of balance and pushed toward imminent collapse. Yet while the ocean is certainly in trouble, it is not just a victim. The ocean holds enormous power to help us rewrite the future of our planet and it has the capacity to bounce back if we just give it an opportunity to do so.

In partnership with leading ocean conservation organisations – including Ocean Unite, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and SeaLegacy – Only One has launched a petition calling on world leaders to protect Antarctic waters, asking them to designate three new marine protected areas (MPAs) at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) meeting taking place this week.

Together, the East Antarctica, Antarctic Peninsula, and Weddell Sea MPAs would protect almost 1% of the ocean globally by covering approximately four million square kilometres. It would represent the largest act of ocean protection in history.

Continue reading this blog here. 

 

Diego is the Partnerships Lead for Only One. Originally from Guatemala, Diego is also a writer and holds a master’s degree in biology from Miami University with a focus on community-based ocean conservation. He is passionate about connecting people to the most urgent challenges facing the ocean and the planet.

Safiya Sawney is currently the Caribbean Policy Lead for Ocean Unite. Most recently she was the Ocean and Climate Policy Advisor to the Mission of the Republic of Palau to the United Nations representing the President of Palau at the High-Level Panel for the Sustainable Ocean Economy and leading Palau’s engagement at the UN Secretary General’s 2019 Climate Action Summit. Safiya was also the project coordinator for the UN Office of Project Services providing strategic support towards the 2020 Our Oceans Conference.

Formerly, Safiya was the lead policy advisor on a Blue Economy partnership platform between the Governments of the Netherlands and Grenada with support from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Safiya has fostered many innovative partnerships to spur action on ocean plastics and environmental awareness for small islands states including partnerships with Parley for the Ocean and Adidas, PangeaSeed, UN Environment, United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and others.

Safiya has provided policy support to Climate Analytics Inc. on Caribbean climate strategies, was the deputy coordinator for the Caribbean team that executed the 2013 Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) Summit in collaboration with Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Unite and The Nature Conservancy and served as technical advisor to Alliance of Small Island Developing States at the UN.

Jon Bassford, CAE, JD, MBA is an association and nonprofit operations professional. Jon has worked for c3 to c7 organizations across many different roles and responsibilities but has carved out an expertise as an efficient and effective operations professional. Through his consulting firm Lateral Solutions, Jon leads several organizations as a part-time operations director as well as client work in college student/campus outreach, organizational development, innovation, and strategy. Jon has truly carved out an expertise helping organizations launch and run internal operations in an efficient and effective manner using digital tools.
 
Across his membership and operational roles, Jon has 15 years of experience leading organizations.

Renee brings nearly a decade of internal operations experience to the Ocean Unite team. Prior to joining the team, Renee worked for eight years at The Pew Charitable Trusts where she began as an administrative assistant supporting their Shark, Tuna, and Whale conservation campaigns as well as the Senior Director of International Ocean Conservation. Particularly adept at identifying operational issues and developing methods to solve them, Renee moved into an operations role working across Pew’s international Ocean conservation projects, then all their environment conservation projects, and later the breadth of Pew’s programmatic work. She has degrees from California State University, San Bernardino, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and recently relocated from Washington, DC, to the California coast. As hard as this team works to protect our magnificent Ocean, Renee is the only person on the team who lives at the beach and relishes in enjoying the beauty of the Ocean every day.

Brittney is Ocean Unite’s digital and social media manager and is a consultant for Communications Inc. Comms Inc. is an agency which works with the not-for-profit sector, with a particular specialism in the ocean and wider environment. They are well known within the international ocean community and enjoy the trust of, and a working relationship with, most of the large international environmental NGOs and coalitions. Recognised for their ability to deliver fast, cost-effective and productive communications and campaigning, they are particularly valued for their strategic contribution based on a sound understanding of the issues, the political landscape within which the issues exist and a creative approach to bringing about change. (www.communicationsinc.co.uk)

One of the principals of Communications Inc., Sophie has nearly 20 years of experience in strategic communications. Comms Inc., is an agency which works with the not for profit sector, with a particular specialism in the ocean and wider environment. They are well known within the international ocean community and enjoy the trust of, and a working relationship with, most of the large international environmental NGOs and coalitions. Recognised for their ability to deliver fast, cost-effective and productive communications and campaigning, they are particularly valued for their strategic contribution based on a sound understanding of the issues, the political landscape within which the issues exist and a creative approach to bringing about change (www.communicationsinc.co.uk).

Nathalie has almost two decades of experience working in environmental advocacy. She worked for over 15 years for Greenpeace International, focusing mainly on biodiversity issues. For many years she worked as Senior Oceans Political Advisor focusing on international ocean governance and marine conservation. More recently she was the deputy director of the Political and Business Unit. She has wide experience of attending and leading delegations at international environmental meetings, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, and ocean-related negotiations at the UN General Assembly. When asked why she feels strongly about protecting the ocean, she says that not only is it home to the weirdest and most wonderful creatures on the planet, tomorrow’s life-saving drugs could be found at the bottom of the sea, not to mention the discovery of an anti-wrinkle cream that actually works!

Karen has over 25 years of experience working for international non-governmental organisations on environmental issues around the world with a particular focus on protecting marine biodiversity and building resilience to climate change. In 2015, Sack established Ocean Unite, co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and former Costa Rican President José María Figueres, to engage leadership voices and the business community to accelerate ocean health and resilience. Ocean Unite is committed to helping secure the strong protection of 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030. It has also developed a groundbreaking partnership with the insurance sector to address ocean risk.

She was senior director for international oceans at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she developed their international oceans program including their ending illegal fishing strategy and initiated and was the managing partner of the Global Ocean Commission. Before that she was head of Greenpeace International’s political and business unit and head of their international oceans programme. In 2004, she was the first person from a non-governmental organization to speak at a regular session of the United Nations General Assembly, where she represented the concerns of over 60 environmental organizations from around the world over the plight of our oceans. Karen is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network. She has master’s degrees in international environmental law and in international political economy.