Saturday is World Ocean Day! June 8th is the annual global celebration where people come together with the common goal of restoring our shared oceans and creating a stable climate for our planet.

United Nations

Oceans Day was originally declared as 8th June, 1992 at the Global Forum, a parallel event at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which took place in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. While celebrations first began in 1992, it was not until 2008 when the United Nations General Assembly formally recognized 8th June as World Oceans Day at a meeting in New York.

Each year the United Nations (UN) has a theme for World Oceans Day, and in 2024 it’s Awaken New Depths. The UN notes that the world is aware of dire state of the world’s oceans, but the planet is not listening and not enough action is being taken; they highlighted this theme to motivate a wave of momentum for the oceans as everyone needs to awaken new depths.

The UN is hosting a hybrid celebration for Word Oceans Day on 7^th June – we know we said it was 8^th June above, but for this year the UN are formally celebrating a day earlier. An in-person event is taking place in New York, which will broadcast live around the world, and you can register here. The event is taking place for two hours starting at 10.30 EDT (3.30 British Summer Time, and 2.30pm UTC) and will feature talks from policy-makers, scientists, managers, thought leaders, and artists in support of the theme.

Ocean Project

The UN is not the only organisation to co-ordinate global celebrations for World Ocean Day. Since 2002, the Ocean Project has co-ordinated events across the planet both for 8^th June, and other events throughout the year.

This celebration is driven by a partnership with the World Ocean Day Youth Advisory Council, to connect with the next generation and give them the opportunity to raise their voice to rally the planet to save the ocean.

Like the UN, each year has a theme and in 2024 it launches a new multi-year theme: Catalyzing Action for Our Ocean & Climate. This is focused on persuading governments and corporations to follow through on their promises to support a healthy ocean, which is needed for a healthy climate, specifically by:

• making the best use of all existing climate solutions.
• accelerating the transition to clean and renewable energy.
• stopping fossil fuel extraction, including oil, gas, and coal.
• rapidly and equitably phasing out single-use plastics.
• collaborating and amplifying the voices of local leaders who are working to implement community actions.
• protecting and restoring natural coastal and ocean ecosystems by creating strongly protected areas covering at least 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.
• creating more solutions at local, national, and international levels that are based on the best science.

The Ocean Project website co-ordinates events, and in 2023 there were thousands of events held in 143 countries. Events taking place this year can be found here.

If you can’t find an event close to you, the website has actions you can take if you have 3 minutes to spare or even one minute to spare. If you have 3 minutes you could help protect the high seas, demand a strong global treaty to stop single use plastics or defend the ocean from deep sea mining.

If you only have one minute to spare, you can promote World Ocean Day on social media, and there are lots of resources available to support this – the logo is at the top of the blog.

We need the oceans to be healthy, as they are a critical part of our planet. So, why get involved … it only takes a minute!

Missing S?

The observant blog readers will have noticed that we’ve referred to both World Oceans Day and World Ocean Day. The former is the official title, but there is a campaign to drop the S as technically there is only one global ocean – it is simply humans that have named the five different oceans.

While we have used the official designation for the UN, we agree with the principles of this campaign. In many aspects of environmental work and conservation, there is too much separating and siloing.

We live on one planet, which has one climate, and one ocean; there are different aspects to the climate and ocean, but everything is interconnected. You cannot solve the health of the worlds oceans by addressing the issues in only one ocean.

For this reason, we’re calling June 8^th World Ocean Day.

It is fantastic event, why don’t you participate?