Guterres calls for an end to ocean ‘plunder’ as UN summit opens in France

“The ocean is the ultimate shared resource,” he told delegates gathered at the port of Nice. “But we are failing it.”

Oceans, he warned, are absorbing 90 per cent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions and buckling under the strain: overfishing, rising temperatures, plastic pollution, acidification. Coral reefs are dying. Fish stocks are collapsing. Rising seas, he said, could soon “submerge deltas, destroy crops, and swallow coastlines — threatening many islands’ survival.”

Call for stewardship

More than 50 Heads of State and Government took part in the opening ceremony, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a show of political force underscoring the summit’s weight.

In total, over 120 countries are participating in the five-day gathering, signaling a growing recognition that ocean health is inseparable from climate stability, food security, and global equity.

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is co-hosting the summit alongside Costa Rica, followed with a forceful appeal for science, law, and multilateral resolve.

“The abyss is not for sale, any more than Greenland is for sale, any more than Antarctica or the high seas are for sale,” he declared. “If the Earth is warming, the ocean is boiling.”

He insisted the fate of the seas could not be left to markets or opinion. “The first response is therefore multilateralism,” Mr. Macron said. “The climate, like biodiversity, is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of scientifically established facts.”

Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles took the podium next, thanking Mr. Guterres for elevating the ocean on the global agenda, then shifting to a stark warning.

“The ocean is speaking to us — with bleached coral reefs, with storms, with wounded mangroves,” he said. “There’s no time left for rhetoric. Now is the time to act.”

Condemning decades of treating the ocean as an “infinite pantry and global waste dump,” Mr. Chaves urged a shift from exploitation to stewardship.

“Costa Rica is a small country, but this change has started,” he said. “We are now declaring peace with the ocean.”

Most notably, the Costa Rican leader called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters until science can adequately assess the risks — a position already backed by 33 countries, he noted.

“We live in an age of turmoil,” Mr. Guterres added. “But the resolve I see here gives me hope… that we can move from plunder to protection. From short-term exploitation to long-term stewardship.”

More to follow…