Dear <<First Name>>,

We started 2024 with a great success at the Boot fair in Düsseldorf, Germany. Several school teachers have been provided with the materials of the Ocean Game which they liked at the Mundus maris space. This and the great response to the FishBase app, not to mention the countless conversations, give us energy to embrace more opportunities throughout the year, from local to global.

Starting with the network of Senegalese women active in the post-harvest sector – fish processing, marketing. They asked us for training in the methods of the Small-Scale Fisheries Academy for strengthening the capacities of their organisation. Our readers provided several thousand Euros towards this task, which were promptly doubled by an anonymous donor. A big thank you for laying the foundations for the training to go forward soon.

For the two historical biodiversity agreements achieved in the last 14 months at global level, the efforts now focus on speedy ratifications and preparations for effective implementation. One is the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the global treaty with most country adhesions under its belt. It was agreed in December 2022. The other, complementary agreement in the context of the Law of the Sea, is setting rules for the previously mostly lawless High Seas, the so-called BBNJ Agreement. That was achieved in February 2023. A unifying demand of both is to protect 30% of all ocean (and land) ecosystems by 2030 to stop the on-going mass-extinctions. All hands are needed on deck to push governments everywhere to ratify and start implementing.

Almost within reach meanwhile is a long-awaited deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to finally deliver a stop to harmful fisheries subsidies. These continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of fishers and ordinary people in West Africa, Asia and elsewhere who depend on fish caught under their noses by subsidised foreign industrial fleets. In West Africa, it has become the choice between enabling locals to provide food for fellow citizens or that same fish being reduced to fishmeal to feed caged salmon in Norway or Chile or various carnivorous fish in China. Do the subsidisers really want to act on their responsibilities?

This is where global meets local struggles for survival. Citizens and civil society organisations everywhere are called to reach out to their governments to adopt and practice the global agreements for nature and human rights protection. At the same time we all need to support initiatives articulating and implementing locally adapted alternatives to global ‘Wild West’ practices.

Keep supporting our successful work with your expertise, your time, your donation:
Mundus maris, Belfius Bank, Rue de Linthout 224, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
IBAN: BE54 0688 9178 6297     BIC: GKCCBEBB

Mundus maris and the many people and organisations we support in their struggles for blue justice say THANK YOU. Together we achieve more!

Cornelia Nauen and the entire Mundus maris Team

Activities around the world