 Welcome to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Moana, Nuiakea. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper, and today we're looking at Greenpeace arrives at the UN General Assembly. The Diplomacy World Cup is set to save our world opens. I'm very fortunate to have with us John Hosevar from Greenpeace USA, Ocean's Arthur John. Thank you so much for making time to share with us some of the important work of Greenpeace. It's nice to be here with you. We know that during the month of August and in the summer, Greenpeace was at the UN General Assembly and in New York quite frequently. Why would Greenpeace sail its ship into the harbors of New York to put their energy behind the important work of what's taking place at the United Nations? I'm glad you asked. Well, so I mean, we've actually, depending on how you count, been working on this global ocean treaty that the UN has been considering for five, 10, maybe even 20 years. It's a really long time in the making. And over the course of this effort, we've spent a lot of time in the halls of the UN, mostly in the basement of the UN, but also at sea. We've brought our ships from the Arctic to the Antarctic and really all over the world, building support for this treaty. And we feel like it's a really important opportunity for a short version. If we get this right, we'll be able to scale up ocean sanctuaries for the first time. Right now, about 2% maybe of the world's oceans is strongly protected. And the scientists tell us that we need to get to 30% by 2030. There's absolutely no hope for meeting that target without this treaty and without it, not just a treaty, but a good treaty. So that's where we've been focusing a lot of our attention over the past, in really 10 years. And why was this summer so important? Why were the negotiations that were taking place in August so crucial in that moment? We're kind of at the crunch point at this stage. Like, unless we get a treaty this year, it's gonna be very, very difficult to meet this goal. And it's not just green pieces goals, many of these governments goal, they've set targets they've agreed to, trying to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030. And then the treaty's the only way that's really going to happen. So if we get the treaty done now, then there's still enough time where we can, we have a few years to implement and actually get there. Otherwise, it's just not gonna happen. So it's the fierce urgency of now that we have to look at, what are some of the other NGOs or civil society that are at the forefront, that are in the same canoe with Greenpeace and rowing together in harmony? And what are some of maybe the best champions that the world should be aware of that are also countries who are making sure that this Beyond Borders and National Jurisdictions Treaty actually comes into reality? We were there as part of a coalition called the High Seas Alliance. And it's a really solid coalition involves a whole bunch of organizations, I would say some of the groups at the forefront are NRDC, Pew, quite a few. Oceana's in the mix, WWF isn't in this, but they're also working on the treaty. And it's been, it's actually been pretty easy from civil society side. Everyone is really closely aligned on what we need. And that's great, that isn't always the case. But on this, everyone knows what we need and it's working really well together. And how about on the country side? What countries is it championed that people should be aware of to applaud and maybe give some moral encouragement to keep going and getting that treaty over the finish line and maybe who are some of the villains that we need to put some more pressure on and make sure that they know the world is watching? I love talking about the villains, but let's start with the good guys. You know, Palau has been strong from the beginning, Costa Rica has been strong. I would say overall, most of the global south, especially the kind of oceanic global south, small island states, a lot of Africa, a lot of South America has been really strong. And one of the big challenges has been that the global south has been pushing for an agreement that would not just protect the ocean, but would start to address centuries of colonialism and inequity. And so we've seen countries for a long time saying, look, we're talking about an agreement to protect the high seas. We need to address access and benefit sharing for genetic marine resources. So if some country is sanctioning or even financing companies to go out and mine or drill or collect sponges or other types of marine life from the high seas, we view that as the common heritage of all mankind. If they're going to benefit from that, we should all benefit from that. And until really late in this process, the EU, the US and most of the global north were not really being very flexible. And they weren't even having some of the critical conversations about this. So it made it very difficult to kind of get to an agreement where we've crossed all the T's, we've done it all the eyes, we've talked through all the issues because they left it to the last minute, but they did finally, right towards the end, they made enormous progress. The US actually stepped up and after, I would say many years of being a major roadblock were actually pretty serious about finding an agreement. It was just a little too late. And that created space for Russia and China, say that never maybe really wanted a treaty at all to be able to say, look, there's just too much unresolved with too little time. We're not going to get this done today anyway. So let's just shelve this and save it for another time. And so even up until the very last night of a two week long meeting, which was the last meeting that's been scheduled, seven o'clock at night, we still felt like we can do this, but then by eight o'clock it all fell apart. And that's when China and Russia said, nah, we're done negotiating this time. And so the president of the assembly decided not to end the meeting, but suspend it. So technically the meeting is still going on in some philosophical imaginary space. Okay, great. So they'll come back together at some point and hopefully it will involve more senior leaders. The idea is to bring back the ministers and hopefully that will make it easier to get to finally get to a treaty. I could hear the sirens in the background telling us that the world is in an emergency call right now. And it is true that the meeting just is in some universe and some alternative universe still going on, but we have to bring higher people. What do you think might be some of the next steps and how could people focus their energy on ensuring that that meeting that is still being open, not closed, but also no treaty on the books, how could we all put our political pressure to make sure that we can move forward? It's a great question. A lot of our work has always been on the kind of science and policy side. We have to be sure that what we're fighting for is the right thing. We have to make sure that our elected officials and the policymakers that are leading the charge understand the science, they understand why we're fighting for the things that we are. The science is critical. It's gotta be where things start, but it's almost never enough. And so we've also been working to bring people into the process. And that starts with helping them understand what's at stake. I would say that most people in New York City, one of the greatest cities in the world, I would say, had no idea that this was happening in their midst. And so we wanted to bring New York to the UN. The UN is in New York. We wanted to bring New Yorkers into the process. We wanted to bring people from all over the world into it. So people that is kind of diplomats are who are used to making decisions in a windowless room with, I mean, it's just, you know, it's real, but it's also metaphor. They don't really see people watching them. And so making them understand that, look, people are paying attention to what you're doing at least this time. And so a big part of our work has been bringing it to the people. And over 5 million people around the world contacted their world leaders and said, we want a strong global ocean treaty. This is important to us. And we haven't got a treaty yet, but we've gotten as close as we have. We've gotten as far as we have because of that kind of public participation and scrutiny. And that makes me really hopeful that with more of that, with more of us, with more people watching this, contacting, I'd say the White House, if we're in the US, but anyone that has enough clout to have a voice that's going to be heard by the State Department, especially right now. So if you are speaking to a member of Congress, ask them to contact the State Department. That, this is the time. This is like, this is our last chance. My best guess is that the final meeting will be sometime between now and March. So it could be as soon as December, could be as late as March, but we don't have a lot of time. This is our moment. So if you want to help out, please, this is the moment. All right, so it's a push that we could do around the holidays, have something to be thankful for, try to do one side or a big present, the whole world, the oceans wrapped up together, which would be essential. And worst case scenario, spring, hoping that we can get the world to concentrate. And I really appreciate also your perspective of the negotiating side. I know when the Human Rights Council was created, China did a similar tactic. When we don't do the right thing early on, it provides that space to allow countries that would want to weaken a treaty. And maybe as you said, not even have one, get away with it. So what we have to do is make sure the US and other countries are pushing for what the people want regarding the protection of our planet, and of course our oceans, but then also to make sure that this treaty works. And maybe you could share a little bit, what would be some of the elements of the treaty and what are its highlights that are so important besides the 30 by 30? And as you said too, we are sort of on a timeline with climate crisis that if we don't take certain actions soon, we really see some irreversible harm that could happen. So it's really organizing now or the future. As we all know, especially people from Hawaii, we live on the water planet. And if we are not taking care of our ocean, the ocean is not going to take care of us. We need a healthy oceans to survive. And so we're kind of a tough spot. It's all come to our attention fairly recently, but we have radically transformed our oceans over the past few decades. We used to think that we could do just about anything and the oceans were endless and bottomless and it wouldn't really matter. But now we know that wasn't true. We've eaten most of the large fish. We have damaged most of the sea floor habitats across the world's continental shelves. Our coral reefs are dying. Most of the mangrove forests are gone. The seagrass beds have been decimated. I could go on, but this is not that time. We're not gonna dwell on that, but it's the reality that I think all of us here understand. And so we have some real urgency and sanctuaries, a network of truly representative strong sanctuaries is the best tool we have to protect biodiversity, to rebuild depleted populations and to give our oceans a fighting chance against threats like climate change, ocean acidification and plastic pollution, as well as, of course, industrial fishing. So that's what this is all about. The big fights in this treaty process partly been around marine genetic resources and access and benefit sharing, which doesn't have a whole lot to do with the core business of the treaty from a conservation standpoint, but it's important, obviously. Also, this question about environmental impact assessments, there, a lot of governments have been pretty resistant to the idea that they should have to do an environmental impact assessment before they license or sanction any extractive activity in the high seas. That I think we've made a lot of progress on. There's still some debates to be had about some of the specifics, but I think we're in pretty good shape there. Another big fight was on the scope of the agreement. So until really very late in the process, the US and many others were saying that, look, if there's already an international body that has authority in a particular region, then the treaty shouldn't affect their region. The problem with that is that there's really almost nowhere in the world where there's an international body with a mandate to create sanctuaries. Basically, we've got Camelar that is responsible for the waters around Antarctica. It's the only place in the world that has created high seas marine sanctuaries. Everywhere else, whether you wanna try to make a convoluted argument that possible that they could, they never have. They don't see it as their job. Almost none of them have a legal mandate to do it, even if they wanted to. So there's been this big fight about something that is kind of core to the success of the treaty. If the argument that we're only gonna talk about areas not covered by existing agreements wins, then maybe we could create new sanctuaries in the Arctic, maybe in part of the Southern Atlantic, but not really much else. So it's super fundamental. For us, it would be an absolute failure if we didn't win this argument. I think we've won it. We don't have a treaty yet. That means that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. It's still possible that people are gonna reopen language and revisit things that have seemed like they've already been decided. But where the draft text is right now is actually pretty good. So that's a big one. I feel good about where we are right now. Just need a little bit more work to get over the line. I can see the next word of view, the brackets, all the things that we have to work through. And it's very important in it. I think what Greenpeace is doing by casting the images on the Brooklyn Bridge and organizing the campaigns, it is what you were saying, bringing people into those windowless rooms, but pointing out that the world really cares and that the people not only want, but demand a treaty so that we have a planet for our future for all people, really rooted in equality and equity and respecting nature, which of course many indigenous host cultures fully understand. I don't wanna say that we were getting desperate, but I will say that we were ready to try just about anything. So, when we were wanting to show the UN that New York, New York is watching, we set up and we organized an event with the goal of being a little bit more festive, but also a little bit sassier than usual. So, we had a dance rally right across the street from the UN with drag queens, with 15 foot tall seahorses with an eco-rapper. She wrote a whole song just about the treaty, which was amazing. We had, it was something else. You basically had to see it. And if you look on our website, I think you might be able to find the video so you could actually watch the song and see what that looked like. And as you mentioned, we also, we projected images and even a short movie on iconic places around New York. So, we started to try to help frame the whole thing. We started out with the animation from the creatures of the ocean to the UN, to the world leaders that we showed on the Brooklyn Bridge. And it was crazy. It's like kind of quasi-legal, right? It's like you could get cited for anything at any time just about, but mostly legal. But as we're setting up, there are helicopters, there are police cars everywhere, some other people, totally non-political, totally unrelated. We're doing like a drag race on the Brooklyn Bridge. So we had to wait for all that to calm down. And then finally, it was kind of safe-ish to do this thing. So we showed this animated movie on the Brooklyn Bridge, which was really cool. And then we did, throughout the meeting, we showed projections. It got a little bit spikier, a little bit more direct on the main library in Manhattan, on the Empire State Building, basically all over the city. And then on the UN headquarters itself. We were able to overcome the fast and furious moment up top with the people not quite concerned enough about carbon. And then as you said, get it more and more focused and pointed as we were able to look at the political leaders getting closer and closer. We're also at an exciting point. And I really do appreciate you spending so much time in New York. Cause I know it's a whole other show, but it'd be great for you to share your experience about being in some of the deepest places on the planet and being able to explore those. And I know that's where your passion is to really appreciate that serenity and that beauty that very few people ever get to see. But they're going to the UN again with the opening of the General Assembly. We know that that will kick off with Brazil giving the first speech in the United States, President Joe Biden. And then it'll go through all 193 heads of state. And it's the 77 opening of the UNGA. What do you hope to accomplish going up to New York? And how can that reinforce the important work around the Beyond Borders and National Jurisdiction Treaty that you've been working on as well? I'm really hoping that this meeting in New York as well as the COP for the Convention on Biological Diversity coming up in Montreal will be moments for the international community to reaffirm their commitment to finalize and agree on this treaty to make it what it needs to be. So that's my hope for, that's my kind of narrow hope for this meeting. Obviously there's so much at stake here, but anytime the world is coming together to talk about climate change, our expectations and our needs are pretty high. But for the treaty, these are both moments where they can restate their commitment to make this happen. And it's also a chance for some fairly senior leaders to hopefully work out some of the points of tension between them. I specifically, I will be there having meetings with a few public officials and corporate executives primarily about actually plastic pollution. And not the focus of this conversation, but the UN will begin negotiating a global plastic treaty in late November. And I'm really excited about the potential there that at this point everything is still on the table. So we could come out of that with caps on plastic production. We could come out of that with bands, elimination of a whole bunch of awful uses of plastic, unnecessary uses of plastic. And I think maybe even with some measures that will enable us to start scaling up the shift from throwaway plastic to reuse and refill. And I know you were able to come to Hawaiian, visit a couple of years ago, and actually led Greenpeace over to Kaho'olawe. Could you maybe share some of the aspect of the plastic? And I think what was also so intriguing is the plastic-oddic element. So I think it's a great teaser to look at in future shows, but it is true that the world has come to an agreement that we should have a global plastics treaty and we're at the beginning of that, but there is also a great amount of goodwill and dedication around the globe to make it a reality. It's true, they've already resolved to develop a binding, ambitious treaty and that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, so it won't just be about recycling and waste management, but can address how we design things and hopefully get rid of a bunch of unnecessary and destructive uses of plastic. One of my more memorable times with Greenpeace was when we went with the ship to Kaho'olawe and it was really amazing as a kind of tropical coral reef ecologist before it came to Greenpeace to pull up to an uninhabited Hawaiian island and it looks just beautiful. It's green and then as we get closer, we see this beach that is so full of trash that is washed up and it's uninhabited. So it's not like people that live there made this mess, it's from all over the world that you climb up on top of the heaps of trash talking six feet high in some places and it was, we spent days working with local community to remove a lot of this trash, but again, it's not the fault of people in Hawaii, it's from Korea, it's from Japan, it's from California, it's from Taiwan and China, it's all over the Pacific because of these prevailing currents, these gyres that create the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the currents just spin that off onto Hawaiian islands. And so it's a great reminder that it's a small planet at the end of the day and the ocean connects us all and we need not just to change the way that we live as individuals, but we need policies that are bigger than any of us or we're not going to be able to solve these problems. It's true, I remember doing one of the beach cleanups and you have the small little scale there that would catch all the plastic and with every wave, you'd have little small pieces of plastic coming in and that can be a bit overwhelming but then it's also the power of the waves and what's possible and how we can just be as powerful as the ocean and unite and get into the flow for a better world and you see that we can make that difference and look at what is possible and how we have to change that because Greenpeace also had that great research where I talked about how much microplastics are actually in people as well, so it's one of those aspects that we are the ocean and the ocean is us and it's being more than just a symbol these days. You're so right. And I love that you brought up the audit so there are beach cleanups all over the world and together with other organizations that break free from plastic movement, we looked at which corporations are responsible for all these bits of plastic that we're seeing all over the world and no matter where you are, it's Coke, it's Pepsi, it's Unilever, it's Procter and Gamble, it's Nestle. And so sometimes you hear people say, oh, well the real problem is in Asia or the real problem is somewhere else but ultimately it's US and European-based corporations that are producing the vast majority of this plastic waste that we're seeing all over the world. Well, we're really thankful and pleased that Greenpeace is sailing into the UN headquarters throughout the summer and this week and we hope we'll be able to be able to steer the world leaders and global civil society to make sure that these wave of treaties that we're looking at for the ocean as well as with plastics will be accepted and we also hope the COP will be successful in Montreal as well on biological diversity and the climate one taking place in Egypt, we really have to get to loss and damages but all those are other shows and we thank you so much for making time on the eve before the General Assembly on the 77th session. Thank you so much Josh, great talking to you as always. All right, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.