ATHENS — From April 15-17, state delegates, organization representatives, academics and philanthropists met at the 9th Our Ocean Conference (OOC) in Athens to discuss the protection of the world’s oceans and pledge actions to safeguard their future. As the OOC took place, news broke about the world’s coral reefs undergoing a mass bleaching event, which lent a sense of urgency to the conference. Experts say this global bleaching event is a result of the current El Niño climate pattern as well as the ongoing rise in global ocean temperatures due to human-induced climate change. “Devastating but also predictable,” is how Melissa Wright, a senior member of the environment team at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which funds ocean conservation work, described the bleaching event at the conference’s opening press briefing. She urged leaders to take “decisive action” on climate change as well as other threats such as overfishing, pollution and development. One of the panels from the 9th Our Ocean Conference (OOC) in Athens, where state delegates, organization representatives, academics and philanthropists met to discuss the protection of the world’s oceans and pledge actions to safeguard their future. Image courtesy of Our Ocean Conference. Pledges to protect the ocean The OOC events, which have been running annually for 10 years (with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and are hosted by a different government each year, are characterized by delegates from states, organizations and philanthropic funds making considerable commitments for ocean conservation and pledging large amounts of money…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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