Repair the Sea Presents a Jewish Voice at the United Nations Ocean Conference in France

Before you start reading this article, please pause for a moment, and take three deep breathes.  Breathe in… and breathe out.  Do that 3 times, and then realize that two of those three breathes were made possible by the Ocean.  The Ocean produces two thirds of the oxygen on Earth yet, like so much of what the Ocean provides for us, we take it for granted.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) as an official member of the “Faith for UNOC3” delegation in Nice, France. While there are other excellent Jewish environmental organizations, Repair the Sea is the only one that focuses on water and the Ocean.  Our primary mission is to share the spiritual wonders of water and the Sea from a Jewish perspective, and to raise awareness and encourage action in the Jewish Community to the many threats facing the aquatic environment. So this is why I was asked to join the delegation. This was the first UN conference that I have ever attended, and it was quite an eye-opening experience.  

Frankly, I am no fan of the United Nations.  Politically, it's dominated by third-world countries that are generally aligned with the Arab World and extremely anti-Israel.  The United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP takes place every year with tens of thousands of delegates, and doesn’t achieve that much because the oil producing nations generally block any substantive actions.  To say nothing of the fact that the last two COP Conferences were held in Azerbaijan and Dubai, two major oil producing nations and COP 27 was in Egypt with the lead sponsor being Coca-Cola which produces billions of single-use plastic bottles every day. So, when I was asked to be a delegate, I was hesitant.  Was the Ocean Conference going to be huge and politicized like the COP Conferences? Was it just going to be a waste of time?  I was told that while there have been 29 Climate Change Conferences that are politically charged, since this was only the third Ocean Conference, it has not been around long enough to be politicized. Finally, the United Nations and the world, are waking up to the fact that there is more to climate change than just carbon emissions and fossil fuels. They recognize that the climate is created by the Ocean, and if we don’t do something now to protect it, the future of humanity is at stake.   So, I decided to attend.

The Faith for UNOC3 delegation was sponsored by the Bloomberg Ocean Fund, which was the lead sponsor of the Conference. It was a multifaith delegation made up of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists.  I was the only Jewish delegate.    Our delegation created a “Multifaith Declaration for the Ocean”  (https://www.oceans.faith/declaration-english#declaration-1-english) which we presented to Ambassador Peter Thomson, the Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, and to Under Secretary General of the UN and Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme, Inger Anderson.  I also sat on two panels discussing "Faith and the Ocean."  Prior to the Conference, I questioned whether faith groups would seriously have a voice at the United Nations, but the UN is recognizing that they need moral voices as well as political and diplomatic voices.   

A highlight of the Conference for me was to meet with the Israeli Delegation, which was headed by Fred Arzoine, the Director of the Marine Environmental Protection Division of Israel's Ministry of Environmental Protection.  Even in the midst of a war, Israel found it important to be represented at the Ocean Conference.  

The major issues the Conference addressed were:

1. 1.The Treaty for the High Seas: Creating a legal structure to protect the 61% of the Ocean that lies outside of national boundaries and EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zones).

2. 2.Target 30 x 30: Designating 30% of the Ocean as Marine Protected Areas by 2030.

3. 3.Calling for a moratorium on Deep Sea Mining.

   
   

   

   Rabbi Ed Rosenthal with Israeli Deligates at UNOC3

   
   

For those who may not be familiar with EEZs, this was determined in 1982 by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).   EEZ designates an area of the sea in which a nation has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources.  Traditionally, a nation's borders extend 12 nautical miles out to sea from their coastline.  The EEZ extends a nation's rights an additional 200 nautical miles.  The EEZ means that some nations have economic rights over significantly larger areas than you might expect based on their land mass alone.  So, the nation with the most territory is actually France.  With all of their territories in the South Pacific, France has exclusive rights to the "resources" covering 12,366,417 square kilometers, followed by the US, Australia, Russia and the UK.  

The Treaty for the High Seas was opened for signatures on Sept. 20th in 2023.  It requires 60 nations to actually ratify the Treaty for it to go into legal effect.  Currently, 136 of the 193 member nations have signed the Treaty, but only 50 have actually ratified it.  The US has signed the Treaty but has not ratified it, and Israel has neither signed nor ratified it.

Another highlight that came from the UNOC3, was the announcement by the Government of French Polynesia that it has designated 5,000,000 kilometers (1.9 million miles) of its territorial water as a Marine Protected Area. This represents the largest MPA in the world, and moves the goal of protecting 30% of the Ocean by 2030 closer to reality.

While the United Nations is generally not held in high esteem in the Jewish Community, I found it encouraging that there was no overt anti-Israel or antisemitic feeling at the Conference.  When the Israeli representative spoke, no one walked out and none of the Arab state representatives spoke negatively against Israel.  Even when the Palestinian representative spoke, he only briefly mentioned the environmental devastation created by the current war in Gaza, but didn't mention Israel.  I wore my kippah and yellow ribbon pin the whole time and didn't have a single issue.  Perhaps, by recognizing the fact that the Ocean unites all of humanity and is vital for life on earth to exist, the nations of the world might be able to set aside their differences and work together to ensure a healthy Ocean and a brighter future for all.

Rabbi Ed Rosenthal at the UNOC3 in Nice, France 2025.