When the countries responsible for protecting the Southern Ocean meet in October, they have a choice to make, and it must be unanimous: vote to create three large marine protected areas (MPAs) spanning nearly 4 million square kilometers of ocean and fortify our planet’s climate defences, or not.
It is not just penguins and whales that we need to worry about. Antarctica regulates our climate and its waters feed the fish that feed the world. The Southern Ocean connects all the world’s ocean basins, its deep cold waters helping to stabilise our climate and circulate vital nutrients across the globe.
MPAs have been proven to boost biodiversity and resilience to climate change. As nowhere is changing faster than Antarctica, nowhere is the establishment of MPAs more vital or urgent than in the precious waters that surround it.
My grandfather once described Antarctica as “a vast, eternally white continent where life clings to the borders of death”. His haunting words ring even truer today with the region at the epicentre of global climate change, its unique fauna clinging to the shifting ice. Together we can protect that life and the future of our planet.