Children for the Oceans attended the Preparatory Meeting of the 2020 Ocean United Nations Conference and delivered a statement.

My name is Thomas Lesage and I am 16 years old. I represent the NGO children for the Oceans, a NGO dedicated to increase the level of awareness of children and civil society on the protection of the ocean.

As mentioned by other NGOs today and some States’ representatives including the representative of Monaco, we now have access to a huge amount of relevant ocean data.

It is now our duty and responsibility to disseminate this knowledge to the whole civil society as there is a crucial lack of awareness on the ocean critical status and the threats it is facing. The whole civil society has to be made aware very quickly of the critical challenges we have to address in the coming years.

For this purpose, Children for the Oceans and many NGOs are ready to contribute to disseminate this crucial knowledge, but we need the full support of the political representatives and states.

Dissemination is one thing, and in addition we all agree that Science and innovations have to be developed but we already have some available solutions and have already identified the key issues.

In this context we need strong political commitments and pragmatic actions to save our ocean. The time for us to act is NOW !