Secretary Antony J. Blinken at the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation Ministerial Remarks September 23, 2024

 

Secretary Antony J. Blinken at the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation Ministerial

Remarks

September 23, 2024

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to what is for me at least the first event of this UN General Assembly High-Level Week. So wonderful to see so many colleagues and friends around this table. And I want to start by thanking my colleague, Ambassador Lapenn, her entire team, and their counterparts for a lot of extraordinary partnership and work that’s been done. And I’m deeply grateful to all of you for coming together and starting this week here with the Atlantic Cooperation Partnership.

The ocean that we share, the Atlantic Ocean, is vital to every nation in the world, but no more so than the nations in this room. It supports most of the world’s fisheries and commercial shipping routes; more undersea cables than any other ocean; essential biodiversity.

And the challenges taking place in the Atlantic – from warming water, to shifting weather patterns, to plummeting fish stocks – these will increasingly affect the lives and the livelihoods of all the people that we represent around this table and well beyond.

So all of our countries have a profound stake in this joint resource.

It was that recognition which led 32 of our countries – across four continents – to launch the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation last September.

And over our first year, we’ve expanded to 42 members from Africa, the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean – representing more than 75 percent of the Atlantic coastline.

Together, we’re fostering greater connections and coordination between our governments, between our civil societies, our private sectors, our scientific communities – laying the groundwork to find and to share solutions to these joint challenges.

We’re helping one another harness new technologies to address common threats.

For instance, as oceans absorb more carbon dioxide, the water becomes increasingly acidic. Among its many effects, ocean acidification harms shellfish populations and the communities who rely on them both for their food and for their livelihoods. So a number of our partner countries are deploying autonomous underwater vehicles that can actually detect peaks in acidity. This information allows shellfish growers to take steps to protect their hatcheries.

We’re also engaging experts, civic leaders, business leaders to identify best practices for coastal development and conservation – ensuring that we unlock economic opportunity without harming wildlife or polluting the ocean that we share.

Countries like Gabon and Belize have been leaders in implementing innovative approaches to preserving our ocean – particularly through debt-for-nature swaps, in which development finance institutions offer critical debt relief in exchange for governments protecting marine areas.

Additionally, we’re mitigating the harm of economic activities that – when those activities can harm our oceans.

In April, Canada convened partner governments and experts to address the rise in lost and abandoned fishing gear – equipment like rope, fishing nets, and traps. This so-called ghost gear accounts for as much as 70 percent of all of the microplastics in the world’s oceans. These tiny particles, in turn, can feed destructive seawood blooms that kill fish, and of course they even permeate into the food that all of us eat.

Costa Rica is piloting a program which collects their abandoned gear and converts it into plastic lumber, which local communities can use to repurpose into public goods – like picnic tables.

We’re also improving data collection and sharing. Information derived from ocean observation, like the speed and direction of surface currents, can help us anticipate extreme weather events like hurricanes and droughts. Historically, the southern part of our ocean has been understudied, and this is something that together we’re changing.

The United States, Brazil, Portugal are leading a platform to help member-states access and analyze this important data.

So these are just some of the examples of the work that countries around this table are engaged in – all in pursuit of a shared goal, of protecting this extraordinary resource that all of us depend on.

As we look ahead to the second year of our partnership, Atlantic nations face challenges that are unprecedented, even existential. Challenges that reflect not just how indispensable the ocean we share is to the lives of our people, but also to the people around the world.

These challenges connect us. They demand that we collaborate. Because it’s only by working together that we can preserve the health of the – of this essential resource – for our people, for all people, and for generations to come.

And in that mission, again, let me say thank you to each and every one of you, to the countries you represent for joining as partners in this endeavor. We’re grateful for it. We have a lot of good work to do together.

Thank you. (Applause.)