How a handful of fishing villages sparked a marine conservation revolution | Alasdair Harris

52,357 views ・ 2019-11-11

TED


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I'm a marine biologist
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here to talk to you about the crisis in our oceans,
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but this time perhaps not with a message you've heard before,
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because I want to tell you that if the survival of the oceans
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depended only on people like me,
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scientists trading in publications,
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we'd be in even worse trouble than we are.
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Because, as a scientist,
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the most important things that I've learned
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about keeping our oceans healthy and productive
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have come not from academia, but from fishermen and women
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living in some of the poorest countries on earth.
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I've learned that as a conservationist,
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the most important question is not, "How do we keep people out?"
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but rather, "How do we make sure that coastal people throughout the world
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have enough to eat?"
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Our oceans are every bit as critical to our own survival
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as our atmosphere, our forests or our soils.
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Their staggering productivity ranks fisheries with farming
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as a mainstay of food production
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for humanity.
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Yet something's gone badly wrong.
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We're accelerating into an extinction emergency,
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one that my field has so far failed abysmally to tackle.
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At its core is a very human and humanitarian crisis.
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The most devastating blow we've so far dealt our oceans
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is through overfishing.
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Every year, we fish harder, deeper, further afield.
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Every year, we chase ever fewer fish.
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Yet the crisis of overfishing is a great paradox:
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unnecessary, avoidable and entirely reversible,
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because fisheries are one of the most productive resources on the planet.
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With the right strategies, we can reverse overfishing.
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That we've not yet done so is, to my mind,
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one of humanity's greatest failures.
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Nowhere is this failure more apparent
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than in the warm waters on either side of our equator.
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Our tropics are home to most of the species in our ocean,
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most of the people whose existence depends on our seas.
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We call these coastal fishermen and women "small-scale fishers,"
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but "small-scale" is a misnomer
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for a fleet comprising over 90 percent of the world's fishermen and women.
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Their fishing is generally more selective and sustainable
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than the indiscriminate destruction
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too often wrought by bigger industrial boats.
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These coastal people have the most to gain from conservation
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because, for many of them,
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fishing is all that keeps them from poverty, hunger or forced migration,
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in countries where the state is often unable to help.
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We know that the outlook is grim:
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stocks collapsing on the front lines of climate change,
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warming seas, dying reefs, catastrophic storms,
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trawlers, factory fleets,
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rapacious ships from richer countries taking more than their share.
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Extreme vulnerability is the new normal.
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I first landed on the island of Madagascar two decades ago,
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on a mission to document its marine natural history.
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I was mesmerized by the coral reefs I explored,
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and certain I knew how to protect them,
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because science provided all the answers:
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close areas of the reef permanently.
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Coastal fishers simply needed to fish less.
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I approached elders here in the village of Andavadoaka
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and recommended that they close off
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the healthiest and most diverse coral reefs to all forms of fishing
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to form a refuge to help stocks recover
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because, as the science tells us, after five or so years,
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fish populations inside those refuges would be much bigger,
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replenishing the fished areas outside,
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making everybody better off.
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That conversation didn't go so well.
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(Laughter)
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Three-quarters of Madagascar's 27 million people
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live on less than two dollars a day.
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My earnest appeal to fish less took no account
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of what that might actually mean
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for people who depend on fishing for survival.
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It was just another squeeze from outside,
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a restriction rather than a solution.
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What does protecting a long list of Latin species names mean to Resaxx,
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a woman from Andavadoaka who fishes every day
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to put food on the table
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and send her grandchildren to school?
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That initial rejection taught me that conservation is, at its core,
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a journey in listening deeply,
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to understand the pressures and realities that communities face
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through their dependence on nature.
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This idea became the founding principle for my work
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and grew into an organization that brought a new approach
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to ocean conservation
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by working to rebuild fisheries with coastal communities.
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Then, as now, the work started by listening,
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and what we learned astonished us.
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Back in the dry south of Madagascar,
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we learned that one species was immensely important for villagers:
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this remarkable octopus.
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We learned that soaring demand was depleting an economic lifeline.
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But we also learned that this animal grows astonishingly fast,
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doubling in weight every one or two months.
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We reasoned that protecting just a small area of fishing ground
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for just a few months
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might lead to dramatic increases in catches,
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enough to make a difference to this community's bottom line
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in a time frame that might just be acceptable.
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The community thought so too,
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opting to close a small area of reef to octopus fishing temporarily,
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using a customary social code,
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invoking blessings from the ancestors to prevent poaching.
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When that reef reopened to fishing six months later,
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none of us were prepared for what happened next.
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Catches soared,
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with men and women landing more and bigger octopus
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than anyone had seen for years.
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Neighboring villages saw the fishing boom
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and drew up their own closures,
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spreading the model virally along hundreds of miles of coastline.
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When we ran the numbers,
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we saw that these communities, among the poorest on earth,
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had found a way to double their money in a matter of months, by fishing less.
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Imagine a savings account
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from which you withdraw half your balance every year
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and your savings keep growing.
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There is no investment opportunity on earth
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that can reliably deliver what fisheries can.
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But the real magic went beyond profit,
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because a far deeper transformation was happening in these communities.
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Spurred on by rising catches,
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leaders from Andavadoaka joined force with two dozen neighboring communities
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to establish a vast conservation area along dozens of miles of coastline.
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They outlawed fishing with poison and mosquito nets
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and set aside permanent refuges
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around threatened coral reefs and mangroves,
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including, to my astonishment,
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those same sights that I'd flagged just two years earlier
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when my evangelism for marine protection was so roundly rejected.
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They created a community-led protected area,
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a democratic system for local marine governance
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that was totally unimaginable just a few years earlier.
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And they didn't stop there:
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within five years, they'd secured legal rights from the state
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to manage over 200 square miles of ocean,
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eliminating destructive industrial trawlers from the waters.
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Ten years on, we're seeing recovery of those critical reefs
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within those refuges.
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Communities are petitioning for greater recognition
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of the right to fish
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and fairer prices that reward sustainability.
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But all that is just the beginning of the story,
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because this handful of fishing villages taking action
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has sparked a marine conservation revolution
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that has spread over thousands of miles,
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impacting hundreds of thousands of people.
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Today in Madagascar, hundreds of sites are managed by communities
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applying this human rights-based approach to conservation
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to all kinds of fisheries, from mud crabs to mackerel.
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The model has crossed borders through East Africa and the Indian Ocean
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and is now island-hopping into Southeast Asia.
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From Tanzania to Timor-Leste, from India to Indonesia,
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we're seeing the same story unfold:
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that when we design it right,
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marine conservation reaps dividends that go far beyond protecting nature,
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improving catches
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and driving waves of social change along entire coastlines,
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strengthening confidence, cooperation
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and the resilience of communities to face the injustice of poverty
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and climate change.
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I've been privileged to spend my career
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catalyzing and connecting these movements throughout the tropics,
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and I've learned that as conservationists,
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our goal must be to win at scale,
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not just to lose more slowly.
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We need to step up to this global opportunity
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to rebuild fisheries:
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with field workers to stand with communities
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and connect them, to support them to act and learn from one another;
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with governments and lawyers standing with communities
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to secure their rights to manage their fisheries;
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prioritizing local food and job security
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above all competing interests in the ocean economy;
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ending subsidies for grotesquely overcapitalized industrial fleets
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and keeping those industrial and foreign vessels
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out of coastal waters.
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We need agile data systems
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that put science in the hands of communities
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to optimize conservation to the target species or habitat.
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We need development agencies, donors and the conservation establishment
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to raise their ambition to the scale of investment
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urgently required to deliver this vision.
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And to get there,
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we all need to reimagine marine conservation
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as a narrative of abundance and empowerment,
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not of austerity and alienation;
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a movement guided by the people who depend on healthy seas for their survival,
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not by abstract scientific values.
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Of course, fixing overfishing is just one step to fixing our oceans.
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The horrors of warming, acidification and pollution grow each day.
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But it's a big step.
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It's one we can take today,
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and it's one that will give a much-needed boost
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to those exploring scalable solutions
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to other dimensions of our ocean emergency.
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Our success propels theirs.
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If we throw up our hands in despair,
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it's game over.
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We solve these challenges by taking them on one by one.
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Our overwhelming dependence on our ocean is the solution
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that has been hiding in plain sight,
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because there's nothing small about small-scale fishers.
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They're a hundred million strong and provide nutrition to billions.
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It's this army of everyday conservationists
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who have the most at stake.
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Only they have the knowledge and global reach needed
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to reshape our relationship with our oceans.
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Helping them achieve this is the most powerful thing we can do
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to keep our oceans alive.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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