9 May 2017: The co-facilitators for intergovernmental consultations for the UN Ocean Conference issued the second revised draft of the Call for Action to be adopted at the Conference. In their letter to UN Member States, Álvaro Mendonça e Moura, Permanent Representative of Portugal, and Burhan Gafoor, Permanent Representative of Singapore, note that the draft accounts for views expressed during the second round of consultations, held in April 2017.
The revised call for action, titled ‘Our Ocean, Our Future: Call for Actions,’ is three-and-a-half pages long, containing 14 paragraphs and a commitment to 22 actions to be taken on an urgent basis, “including by building on existing institutions and partnerships.” The co-facilitators note that Paragraph 11, which refers to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and Paragraph 13(p), which refers to ongoing World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations on fisheries subsidies, have not been modified from the first revised draft, because the April consultations “clearly revealed the need for further technical discussions” to find consensus on these two parts of the text.
The final round of consultations is scheduled for 22, 23 and 25 May 2017. The UN Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development will convene from 5-9 June 2017, in New York, US. [Second Revised Draft and Letter from Co-facilitators] [SDG Knowledge Hub Story on Other Preparations for Ocean Conference]