Vote the ocean

2024 is set to be the biggest global election year in history. 4 billion people will head for the voting booth as polls open around the world. Elections big and small, including in India, the US, and the UK, will decide who takes office in some of our largest democracies.

Politicians are already campaigning and canvassing, making pitches and drafting manifestos to win hearts and minds, and the opportunity to govern our collective future. As they prepare, the specter of artificial intelligence and deep fakes also looms large, as technological innovation potentially threatens the validity of votes. It’s certain that whatever the outcome, losing politicians will rail against the results, claiming that the outcome was rigged or that they were robbed. This is all part of the post-truth world that we have found ourselves inhabiting. A place where conflict, hostility and disagreement are rife.

Whoever wins and wherever they win, newly elected leaders and administrations will be at the helm of Planet Ocean in this most crucial decade for the environment. The need for ocean and environmental action is the truth we need them all to agree on. After all, they will be the ones overseeing the protection of this one planet that we all share.

They will take us towards and beyond 2030, by which time world leaders have committed to protecting 30% of land and sea for wild nature, with the remaining 70% managed sustainably with industry. We don’t have long to deliver this. They will also be the politicians in charge of delivering climate action, and the commitments set out by the historic Paris Agreement. They will have to respond at a rapid pace to the twin climate and biodiversity crisis.

Tackling these intertwined challenges is really the foundation of anything else that we might vote for. The economy, job security, future prosperity, the cost of energy, our health and all that we hold dear. Especially the future of our children. Without dramatic action to protect and restore nature, without a rapid restructuring of our economies, without a shift to renewable energy, we’ll doubtless continue on the pathway that assures our self-destruction.

We stand at an environmental inflection point that we have seen coming for decades. As the brilliant author Rachel Carson said so presciently over half a century ago: “The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present needs while ensuring their preservation for future generations requires a delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics.”

Whilst the cost-of-living crisis and global conflicts might dominate news headlines, our war with nature must become the priority to deliver a bright and prosperous future for people across the globe. Thriving nature, and especially thriving seas, is the one thing that we all depend on. All of us. Everywhere.

We simply cannot live without the myriad of life that we share this planet with, from the deepest seas to the highest mountain. Protecting and restoring the abundance of life on our planet should also be the central tenet to all new government policies for these forthcoming global elections. It should be the driver of the new economy and future we want to create. Protecting nature should be the opportunity for us to do things better, drive the new economy, find equilibrium, and flourish for years to come. Politicians should be linking environmental action to a growing economy, not dismissing it as an unaffordable expense. There’s no doubt – we can’t afford not to act to protect our ocean and nature.

The urgent need to protect Planet Ocean can’t be a political choice. It is science. It is fact. It is essential. We need to vote for the politicians that will rise to this challenge to create an unstoppable tide of wild hope action, and optimism to restore this beautiful blue planet. Make sure you vote for Planet Ocean.