Fair Seas conference makes a welcome return to Cork
Flossie Donnelly from Dun Laoghaire during a rally led by Fair Seas outside Leinster House, Dublin, highlighting a lack of progress on the vital Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Bill. Photo: Gareth Chaney
Many of us may still have dodgy tans or a newfound dependence on Aloe Vera following the glorious recent heatwave, but apart from that you could be forgiven for believing this week is just like any other.
For many working in the environmental field, however, this seemingly ordinary week is actually the most important one of the year – and certainly the busiest!
World Ocean Week is currently being celebrated through various events, campaigns and conferences worldwide, each leading up to World Ocean Day on Monday, June 8th.
Here in Ireland, however, the indisputable highlight of the week is today, as the Fair Seas World Ocean Week conference gets underway in Cork City Hall.
It is the second-ever conference of its kind to take place in Ireland, with Fair Seas, a coalition of Ireland’s leading eNGOs, last holding the event in 2023.
If you’re picking up on a sense of déjà vu around today’s proceedings, however, it’s not just because this year’s conference is once again returning to Cork in the very same venue!
Sadly, many of the big issues that dominated the conference three years ago are still yet to be dealt with by the Irish government.
“Despite a commitment to introduce vital Marine Protected Area (MPA) legislation in 2023, the government has yet to deliver,” explains Dr Donal Griffin, Fair Seas campaign coordinator.
“Fair seas has been campaigning for this new national MPA legislation for five years and while some progress has been made in response to that, it’s not nearly enough.
“As Ireland’s Programme for Government even alludes, MPAs are a big opportunity to address the biodiversity and climate crisis at a national level. Effectively managed MPAs are the only way for Ireland’s marine life to survive and thrive.” MPAs have a particularly pivotal role to play in helping Ireland reach its 30x30 target, which aims to have 30% of Ireland’s ocean territory to fully protected by 2030.
However, with less than four years remaining, Fair Seas has found that currently Ireland has just over 9% of its ocean protected.
Meeting the target will be a daunting challenge, but its one that international marine experts are watching closely.
Several of them are even attending today’s conference in Cork, including Minna Epps, Global Ocean Policy Director for the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) who will be delivering the keynote address.
“Ireland may seem like a relatively small EU member state in the grand scheme of things, but actually when you include its marine territory, it’s one of the biggest member states that the EU has,” Dr Griffin outlines. “It has a huge EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) for which it has responsibility for allocating marine resources and managing the marine life and overall environment there.
“We’re taking about a sea and an ocean that is actually seven times the size of Ireland’s land mass, so it’s not a small state really at all, it’s a large island nation. I think that also speaks to the importance of this year’s conference and explains the appetite for people from genuinely all corners of the world to come to Cork and be part of the conversations, or even just listen to the conversations that we’re going to be having on MPAs and more broadly how we go about managing our seas.
“It’s such an important opportunity for us to bring together so many different relevant stakeholders, including politicians, eNGOs, fishing industry representatives and tourism operators, people whose livelihoods are affected by the issues we’re discussing. Facilitating that stakeholder engagement has always been a core part of the Fair Seas mission.”
