 Hello everyone and happy world ocean day. I have been emceeing the conference for fair seas Ireland here at City Hall and Cork And it has been a phenomenal day, but I wanted to share the summary of insights with you But particularly can I just show you this right? This is a summary graphic of every single aspect of what happened today And the person behind this graphic is called Robin DC And she first of all is absolutely incredible and has given me great help along the way here for any of you that Have seen me emcee in the past. You know that I love to summarize each Element of the conversation and so on so actually I didn't realize until I came down to speak to her She mentioned that she was benchmarking her summary graphically here against what I was saying So now I'm actually going to do the opposite. So let me take it from the top. First of all, I Started off this morning by opening up to say that 97 97% of life in the world is actually in the ocean So obviously that's a massive statistic and the challenges related to climate change, etc. Are very very significant On the other hand, I also looked at this from a business point of view Which isn't always done and I particularly looked at a study by Euronext and it pointed out that There's a 30% growth in the number of companies in the blue economy that have listed in Euronext since 2015 And it also pointed out that the market cap of companies in the blue economy in Europe is actually equivalent to that of the GDP of Belgium and Also, there is 1.4 million people Employed in the blue economy as well across Europe. So I just wanted to give both sides of that now moving on from there it then but we first of all had a Conversation a keynote address from Dr. Rashid and his topic was extremely simple But very powerful in this message and he said that I'm just gonna bring you down here So that you can see he pointed out not everything not everywhere and not all at once His point was not everything It means that there needs to be biodiversity justice his point about not all at once is intergenerational justice and not everything It means that we can't be leaving future generations to eat only jellyfish He also went on he also spoke about an economic concept and that is net Present value and that is that if I do something today Well, then the impact of that made a client over time, but he said if you're actually Re-establishing stocks of fish for example in a marine protected area. Well, then not alone I have you turned that around but the fact that would be restocked over time means that then the impact of that is Dramatically and exponentially higher. So then that led us to the whole conversation around marine protected environments Now there isn't a specific definition around it and there's varying different elements of what a marine protected area is Stretching from one side of the spectrum can be a marine protected area means Absolutely, nothing can be taken out to the sea There can we can't be any industry that happens on it all the way over then to what they call a paper park Which is where it's designated, but it's very weakly protected But the point is is that at the moment in Ireland, it's we're currently in a position where up until very recently 2.1% of our of our ocean area was protected that is now going up to 8.3% But the aim is to get this to 30 by 30 which means the 30% of Ireland's ocean area would be protected would be a marine protected area by 2030 Yeah, if we move on then and I'm going to take you over here to this panel discussion, right? So this one up here was called healthy seas. How are we fairing and first of all? Professor Mark Costello started off by telling us that there's a lot of myths around this like they're expensive that they take a Remarkable amount of management and therefore if they do then it can only be rich environments that have them and he was telling us a story about Actually, there could be a lot of Other things that can happen as a result for example He was telling us a story of an MPA in New Zealand where number one the MPA turned into an area of Huge tourist attraction because the fish were more plentiful and people were snorkeling and then there was more tourists attracted there So then the facilities needed to be set up accordingly and actually the MPA was a hive of Activity as opposed to stopping things. I don't know whether you can hear that in the background But they're pulling down the stage. So as always, I'm telling you the breaking news as it's happening But we are in a live environment now then we had down here, right? So this is Dr. Valerie Hiller. Dr. Valerie Hickey from the World Bank Fantastic woman really and truly fantastic woman and she made so many points But one of the key things she said is that MPAs are generally speaking taking care of the ocean needs to be funded by more than a public one public purse She said money needs to come from three areas. Number one is from domestic budgets Number two is from international budgets public budgets and number three is from private finance And she also pointed out as well is that you have to make sure and take care of people Who are particularly affected by the decisions that you make whether it's that's the fishing community or whether that is the people who Have an industry as a result of the fish that they catch etc All of that really needs to be taken into consideration Now then we had Dr. Brian Brian Mcshary over here and he shared some statistics with us For example that in the EU 12% of the ocean area is marine protected in North America It's 15% and in Latin America is 24% and he also Shared that we need more data to understand not just the impact that is happening in the oceans at the moment But also what's happening further afield thereafter now then over here we had Donald Griffin from from Fair seas Ireland and he spoke about the legislation that is drafted and all about what may happen if this When this comes into law and the considerations around it as well now moving on from there I also want to mention that we had two very inspirational messages one from Dr. Cynthia Earl and another one from Al Gore talking about the fact that The not alone is there a challenge, but there is a massive opportunity now And also Al Gore mentioned that there is a lot of political will and That that too is a renewable energy resource and that that is the way it needs to be handled So then after that we had another we had a keynote address over here from him or Manning And she spoke about the impact of climate justice So she was talking about when we look at climate change It's important to really think about the impact of those that would be affected by changes as a result Now that's not the typical way of looking at it right ordinarily We think about who's gonna be affected by climate change the climate itself But she is also saying if we were to completely change industries around it's people that put into the bottom end of the Food chain that could be affected by that and that's what climate justice is It's thinking about everybody But she also spoke about the importance of bringing young people into the conversation now any of you that know me You know how much I agree with that given how many teenagers we work with But she was particularly saying that young people under 30 years old make up a third of the global population They're endlessly innovative and they're driven to act in a meaningful way now from there Then we went on to talk about delivering Transformational change for better MPA outcomes now I'm just gonna show you here like look at the detail here that has been applied to this on the part of Robin like she's just unbelievable in fairness to her. She's just amazing if I could summarize this The key points here is that there's lots of international best practice for a start number two is that MPAs do lead to greater fishing stocks and therefore the what the fishermen and Fisher people what the Fisher community are looking for and what they may be afraid of needs to Be listened to in the context of what has happened in different places around the world So for example in in an MPA in outside Hawaii Yellowfin tuna has increased by 40 it's 54% and there's six times more fish in protected areas and also as well They they constantly constantly constantly there was a focus that when you're introducing MPAs It's so important to bring people with you talk to the local people get listen to the local stakeholders Get them on board don't tell them what's gonna happen Involve them in the decisions and in the conversations that are gonna happen along the way Communicate communicate in a language that other people can understand be excited and be hungry to hear their points of view and Point out that there can be really good outcomes as a result of this now Then what we also had was we this panel over here, which was harnessing Stakeholder involvement for better MPA outcomes now this was a different type of panel discussions So we had people from industry with people from the bird watching community. We had people from and Oh, I'm going to pop over here now. Actually. I'm gonna we also had from the cork environmental form We've burning a colony. We have Nile McManus from the marine renewable sector We had Karen Healy from the fish sector then we also have Nile McAllister from marine tourism So looking at five different stakeholders and their concerns and their worries But also what do they want when it come to when it comes to stakeholder engagement What holds them back and I want as again, you know, I will ask the questions that I feel are really important Like who's not being listened to what stakeholder is not in the room. What is there a source? Is there a lot of distrust is there something that can be done to accelerate or catalyze the conversation and so We spoke about all of those areas again It was about number one people need to be brought to the table Social costs need to be borne by the appropriate partners People need to be listened to actions need to be followed up on but particularly as well There is a big concern, of course that this is an issue that needs attention and very very quickly And so we finish up here with Dr. Mihalo Keneja who finished off by telling us that there are four key outcomes that need to Result from today is we need to learn legislate measure and protect Thank you so much to ifa to jack to donal and to alana for inviting me to receive this conference here at city It's been a super experience to work with you at such an important conversation