The landmark summit aims to coordinate global action to preserve oceans by enhancing our understanding of how they function.
On July 1, 2022, the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, will be in Lisbon to take part in the second United Nations Ocean Conference.
This second edition, initially scheduled for 2020 after a first edition in 2018, is a milestone meeting that officially kicks-off the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021 to 2030). The landmark initiative aims to quickly produce sufficient scientific understanding to protect our oceans, now considered decisive in balancing Earth’s climate.
The Foundation is a founding and particularly active member of the Ocean Decade Alliance, the high-level body driving the Ocean Decade worldwide and of which Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa is a patron.
In Lisbon, the Foundation together with partners including the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), the Portuguese Ocean Azul Foundation, FUGRO and the National Institute of Fisheries Research, will hold a side event on the role of African NGOs in the Ocean Sciences Decade on Friday, July 1st.
To this end, the Foundation will present the work it has conducted over 20 years of existence, in collaboration with partners, notably Moroccan civil society organizations, in preserving beaches, coasts, seas and oceans. It will present educational and awareness- and consciousness-raising actions carried out with domestic and international associations and expand on its collaboration since 2021 with IOC-UNESCO, the global coordinator of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development.
The Foundation will also elaborate on the “Bouknadel Declaration”. This declaration was drafted by over thirty leading philanthropic foundations from Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America, at the second edition of the Foundations Dialogue, last June 1-3 at the Hassan II International Center for Environmental Education, and publicly proclaimed at the High-Level Forum of the Ocean Decade held by IOC-UNESCO at the conference in Lisbon on June 30, as a fundamental tool to attain Decade objectives over the upcoming eight years.
The Foundation made two announcements at the side event closing, true to its focus on South-South and three-way cooperation, particularly in Africa. These are the granting, along with the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (AMCI), of ten scholarships to African students to study Ocean Sciences, and the creation of a working group to engage African Foundations and NGOs in the Ocean Decade.