 My name is Diana, and I'm the social media manager at IEA. We are live from COP26 in Glasgow, and we are here to share how nuclear science can help the world fight climate change. And here with me I have Ambassador Peter Thompson, and he is the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean. Ambassador Thompson, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. I would like to know a little bit how you got to be the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean. I was appointed by the Secretary-General in 2017 after I finished being President of the General Assembly of the UN. Prior to that I had been the former representative of Fiji for about six years, seven years in New York, and I was very passionate about the Ocean's formation of SDG-14 and the UN Ocean Conference to keep the implementation of SDG-14 honest. SDG-14, life underwater. SDG-14, to conserve and sustainably use the Ocean's resources. Not balance. Very well. And I've heard the Ocean being called the buffer. What exactly does this mean? You know, I don't really know what they mean by buffer. I guess like most of our language it's quite sort of anthropocentric. The Ocean to me is the planet. You know, it's 70% of the surface of the planet. We came from the Ocean and we belong to the Ocean, not the other way around. So a buffer, no, I feel actually part of the Ocean. I think what they mean by buffer is where they're talking about its absorption of CO2 and absorption of heat from global warming. But yeah, it's not an expression I use much. All right. And how is exactly climate change affecting our Ocean? What I've got things in question. Okay, first of all, here's my mantra. My mantra is no healthy planet without a healthy Ocean and the Ocean is immeasurably in decline. And you can take the measurements like around fishing, around habitat destruction, around pollution, but it's principally related to greenhouse gas emissions because that's what's causing the deoxygenation, acidification, fastest rate in planetary history, acidification in the Ocean and the warming of the Ocean. It's the same GHG emissions that we're pumping out from our coal and power and all the rest. So that is the main factor, you know. That's why the Ocean climate nexus is so important. You can't have an Ocean meeting without considering the climate and vice versa. Why we're here fighting in Glasgow. What is the climate, its interaction of the Ocean and the atmosphere? And why are people linked to the Ocean regardless of where they live? And here you have a quite complex word to tell our audience. Oh, okay. We were talking about this earlier, pro-chlorococcus. It sounds like a Roman senator about we stabbed in the forum, you know, pro-chlorococcus. But I learned about pro-chlorococcus recently and it's become my hero because, you know, it wasn't really discovered until the 1950s, but pro-chlorococcus is the smallest photosynthetic organism. But its size is a non-indication of its contribution to us all. It produces 20% of the oxygen in the biosphere. You know, we wouldn't exist without pro-chlorococcus. I want to learn how to say, can you repeat it again for me, please? Pro-chlorococcus. Coccus. Coccus, pro-chlorococcus. Yeah, exactly. Well done, well done. You come from Fiji, as we already said. Why does ocean change matter so much for people from small islands? Well, yeah, I guess it's an obvious answer. You know, you're surrounded by the ocean and it's called as Canaries in the coal mine, but I think, you know, everybody in the coal mine knows now we're in deep, deep trouble. But, you know, you notice it when the fish are leaving your waters. You notice it when your reef gets bleached. And you notice it when your beaches start filling up with plastic, with labels on. You don't even know the language that those things have got on the side of the plastic. You know, they've come thousands of miles across the ocean to pollute your beaches. So, you know, we've been seeing that since the turn of the century in a big way. And that's all around the world. So, yeah, everybody's in on it now. And, of course, these people, they all depend on the ocean to survive as well, people that live in the islands. Very much so. When you're talking about food, talking about transport, you're talking about, you know, your daily sustenance, but also the thing that you've got to respect because that's where your weather comes from, that's where the big storms come from. So, you know, it's people in the Pacific islands that don't talk about the ocean in a possessive way. We belong to the ocean, not the other way around. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you also mentioned coral bleaching. Can you tell us a little bit more about that phenomenon? Yeah, well, as I said before, no healthy planet without a healthy ocean. If you take coral away from the ocean, that's 30% of its biodiversity. What's the effect on the health of the ocean? Obviously, it can't be good. So, you know, we're very worried about the coral situation because the IPCC has said that when we go to 1.5 degrees, we lose 70 to 90% of the coral in tropical coral reefs. So it's a very worrying situation. The good news is that there are some resilient areas where it looks like because of ocean upwelling of colder waters and currents, that I was looking at the list today, Cuba, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Philippines, Indonesia, Madagascar and Tanzania all fit that category where there's likely to be resilient reefs, which is really important. You know, it becomes sort of, you know, the bank of living coral for the world. So that very, very, again, it's a hopeful thing that not all coral will go. So when we stabilize climate and we need to go and get the genetic resources and so on, those reefs will still be there. If we look after them properly, if we look after the property. Because they can recover. They can recover, but maybe not as strong? Well, no, they are resilient. Those reefs, we hope, as long as they're looked after properly and then the recovery can be taken out to other areas with what remains of the coral. So that is actually a message of hope. It's one which has given me quite a bit of hope and I think that, you know, we may be only working with 10 to 30% of the coral that we used to have, at least we'll have it. And we can protect it and use it to restore. Yeah, we should protect them. That's perfect. And what do countries need to do today to secure the future of our oceans for generations to come? For? What do we need to, I mean, the ocean will always be there. That ocean will always be there. Will we be here? We don't know. That's the unknown. But the ocean will always be there. So what we're talking about is, you know, how do we maintain conditions that are good for us in relation to the ocean? So we don't want it to become too acidic because you can't have calcium carbon at life in acidic conditions, right? Shellfish, vertebrates and so on. And that's one thing. And that's greenhouse gas emissions. Stop burning coal. Get our greenhouse gas emissions under control. Net zero by 2050. All the things that this conference is about. And we can get on top of ocean acidification and warming of the ocean. But the bad news is we've set things in train. Those things are happening. But instead of going that way, we can bring that curve down by remedial action now by taking the sensible decisions now. We can bring it down so that the rates don't accelerate the way they're accelerating in the moment that they come down. We can steady things down and get to a stable situation in the future. That's what we've got to do as a species for our own good. So as the ocean is concerned, it will carry on. And are you optimistic about the future? I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist, right? I think of myself as a pragmatist, you know, get the job done. But in terms of optimism and hope, obviously that is what I'm about. That's why I do what I do. And somebody asked me the other day, where do I get that energy from? And that's why my family put this together. Grandfather of Grace Mirabelle Poppe and Rose, kids rights now. And I believe in that. You know, it's not about us. It's about that generation to come. And so, you know, when I answer that question of where do I get optimism from, I say become a grandfather or a grandmother. Because once you get grandchildren, you can never give up. You have to fight for them because you love them more than you love yourself, obviously. That's beautiful. Thank you for that answer. Last question. You visit the IA Environment Labs in Monaco. And could you tell me more about what you saw there and why the work being carried there is important? It's fantastic work. And I went to the anniversary the other day. Sorry, I can't remember what was the... Sixth anniversary? Or was it the 60th? Yes. Or the 60th. I was going to say either it was 75th or... 60th. 50th. So I was kind of halfway there. Yeah, it's done great work over the years. You know, what do you think of things like nuclear, leaks, Fukushima, that sort of thing? Who do you turn to? You turn to those labs. That's the UN's environmental labs. That's our go-to. And I guess every time I go there, I come away hopeful because I see that great team of scientists is working just on the pure science. And you can ask a tough question, you get a straight answer. And I would say the tough questions I've asked there, I usually get a much better answer than I personally thought because I'm not a scientist. I've given an example on that, you know, the nuclear leaks and so on. But the thing that they always say to me is, Peter, you do not emphasize enough the impact of heavy metals in the seafood that we eat. They trace those very carefully. So, you know, I would say that that's one of the things that I've really learned from the many visits I've made to the IAEA Environmental Labs in Monaco is that we really need to be very careful about what we're putting into our rivers, into our ports by the way of heavy metals because that's being absorbed by sea life and then we take it. And that's actually the most damaging thing to our health of all these things that are out there, including microplastics. I have one more question. Is there anything, any piece of advice, something that me or my colleague or my neighbor can do to help? There's a thousand things you can do. Every individual has a responsibility if they care. If they don't care, they can just go to the beach and drink beers and throw their bottles away, I suppose. But most of us care now, you know. Because of this, you know, we want the continuity. We love those that are coming after us. I don't care what it is. People can sometimes belittle those that are doing beach cleanups. I say, my God, no, you know, we've got to have that. Yeah, the problem keeps coming, yeah, but we still go out and fight it. Walking here, I have to say this, because my father was from Glasgow. My mother was from Fiji, father was from Glasgow. I was ashamed walking along the waterfront this morning to see the amount of plastic which is lining the foreshore of the River Clyde on the quarter of a mile approaching this conference. And that's our responsibility. Yeah, now, I've seen small groups of kids in the Philippines. I've seen small groups. I was part of a small group of kids in New York going around and picking all that stuff, putting it in the bags and taking it away. So, you know, everybody can do something. And I'm sorry, you know, there's attitude of us other people can fix it. No, that's no good. Every human being has a role to play. Everyone can pick up their garbage. Thank you. Yes. Ambassador, thank you so much for being here with us today. It was such a great pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll come back tomorrow. Follow us to Agathans for Climate to see what's happening, what activities we are carrying on. And I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you, Ambassador. OK. My father would be rolling his grave about what I just said.