World Oceans Day is celebrated on 8th
June every year. The day was declared in 2008. June 8 was
marked as it marks the day when it was first proposed in 1992 by Canada’s International Centre
for Ocean Development (ICOD) and the Ocean Institute of Canada (OIC) at
the Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Conference supported the implementation
of Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG) 14 of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and
marine resources for sustainable development.
Theme
2019:
The theme for the year 2019 is Gender and Oceans. The
theme is to build greater ocean and gender literacy and to discover possible
ways to promote gender equality in ocean-related activities such as marine
scientific research, fisheries, labour at sea, migration by sea and human
trafficking, as well as policy-making and management.
The importance of gender equality is being
recognized increasingly for the effective conservation and sustainable use of
oceans, seas, and marine resources. Yet very little data and researches are
available on these issues. Serious action towards gender equality and the
empowerment of women and girls is still needed in all ocean-related sectors to
achieve Sustainable
Development Goal 5.
Plastic
Pollution:
María
Fernanda Espinosa, the
President of the General Assembly launched Play It Out which is a global
campaign against plastic pollution. Decades of overuse of single-use plastics has
caused a huge menace to the marine lives. 13,000,000 tonnes of plastic leak
into the ocean every year which kills 100,000 marine animals annually.
While most plastics are expected to remain
intact for decades or centuries after use. These plastics erode and ends up as
micro-plastics, consumed by fish and other marine wildlife, quickly making
their way into the global food chain
