World Ocean Day is an international day that takes place annually on June 8 under a new annual motto announced by the United Nations. The concept was originally proposed in 1992 by Canada’s International Centre for Ocean Development and the Ocean Institute of Canada at the Earth Summit – UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Mundus maris actively contributes to the celebrations since 2014.

“Let’s Put the Ocean First”, UN Secretary-General said in a message for World Ocean Day, 8 June 2023, urging all to keep pushing for recovery, conservation, sustainable use of resources. ‘Humanity counts on the ocean. But can the ocean count on us?” Following on from recent global agreements to protect 30 % of the ocean – including the High Seas – and 30% of the land for stopping mass species extinctions, the UN motto for World Ocean Day 2023 was “Planet Ocean: Tides are Changing”.

The activities of Mundus maris asbl and its partners to celebrate World Environment Day (5 June) and World Ocean Day 2022 (8 June) started already in May with raising awareness in two classes at the Colegio Bilingüe Báltico in the Veracruz Province, Mexico. The UN motto for this year ‘Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean’ is particularly stimulating and timely in the light of several major reports published in the last few months and painting a gloomy picture of greater negative impact of human action on the ocean than expected. Having said this, the research also shows that much worse can be prevented by determined collective action, e.g. weaning us faster from fossil fuels and delivering the deal in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to finally phase out harmful fisheries subsidies.