UN Ocean Conference 2022

Research and policy experts from our three partner organisations undertook prominent roles - delivering keynotes, moderating, speaking and chairing - at over 20 events during the UN Ocean Conference 2022, as part of Marine Research Plymouth’s contribution and commitment to SDG14.

The week-long 2022 UN Ocean Conference, themed ‘Scaling up ocean action based on science and innovation for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: stocktaking, partnerships and solutions’, concluded on the 1st July, with the unanimous adoption of the Lisbon Declaration, "Our ocean, our future, our responsibility”.

Supporting the overall theme of the Conference were eight Interactive Dialogues which focused on recommendations to support the implementation of SDG 14, including through strengthened cooperation, building on existing successful partnerships and stimulating innovative and concrete new ones.   

Professor Stephen Widdicombe, PML’s Director of Science and Co-Chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) Executive Council (pictured above), was involved in multiple events including Moderator of the Dialogue: Minimizing and Addressing Ocean Acidification, Deoxygenation and Ocean Warming, following his nomination for this panel by the UK Government as well as IOC UNESCO. 

Dr Victor Martinez-Vicente, who leads the research at PML on satellite remote sensing detection of marine plastic debris pollution, was a speaker in the official side event ‘Addressing Marine Plastic Pollution’, led by the IAEA, and at the ‘Integrating Marine Litter Monitoring to Inform Action’ event focusing on the necessity of supporting a Global Integrated Marine Litter Monitoring Platform as a strategic tool to achieve SGD 14 by 2030.

Professor Richard Thompson 0BE, Director of the Marine Institute at the University of Plymouth was also a speaker at the ‘Integrating Marine Litter Monitoring to Inform Action’ event alongside Victor, and also Moderator of the official side event, Plastic Pollution: what is holding us back from solutions. Following this Richard and fellow Lisbon panelists had the article, Plastics Treaty - research must inform action published in Nature.