G7 progress on marine and ocean protection and Japan’s role as G7 Presidency in 2023

Last year, at the G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers’ Meeting in 2022, an ambitious G7 Ocean Deal was adopted on marine conservation and attached to the communiqué. A progress report was published in December 2022.

The G7 Ocean Deal states that rich marine ecosystems are important for life on Earth, that efforts are essential to halt and biodiversity loss and restore biodiversity and to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and that overfishing must be halted and pollution fought. The Government of Japan holds the G7 Presidency in 2023. Protecting and restoring marine ecosystems is an important issue for humanity. As the Presidency this year, the Government of Japan must ensure that it fulfils its previous commitments and strengthens efforts at home and abroad.

In order to support Japan’s efforts and to make the G7 Ocean Deal more widely known to civil society and other stakeholders in Japan, FoE Japan has translated into Japanese the progress report published last year. We hope you will find it useful.

Here are links to the relevant documents.

G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers’ Communiqué
(English and Japanese provisional translation – jumps to website of the Japan Ministry of the Environment)

G7 Ocean Deal (English, link to German government website) (We are contacting authorities to get a Japanese provisional translation released.)

G7 Ocean Deal – Progress Report (December 2022)

English – (link to German government website)

Japanese – translation by FoE Japan

About the G7 Ocean Deal (excerpts)

• We understand a clean, healthy and productive ocean with resilient marine ecosystems is essential for all life on earth. The ocean’s ecological functions are indispensable for our joint efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, halt and reverse biodiversity loss, ensure food and nutrition security and foster sustainable and resilient livelihoods for coastal populations worldwide. We must therefore stop and reverse the overexploitation of natural resources and degradation of the marine environment, combat the severe level of pollution and the accelerating effects of climate change and biodiversity loss, which are exacerbating cumulative pressures on the ocean.
• To limit the catastrophic impacts of climate change on the ocean, it is imperative that all countries align their nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement with a 1.5-degree limit on global average temperature rise and urgently take action based on the latest available science, including the special report of the IPCC on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
• We pledge to contribute with national and international efforts to conserve, protect and restore coastal and marine ecosystems.
• We fully support the commitment of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to establish a representative system of MPAs in the Convention area as soon as possible. This should be based on the best available scientific evidence as well as on the proposals to establish MPAs in the Weddell Sea, East Antarctica and the region around the Western Antarctic Peninsula.
• We are ready to do our utmost to end plastic pollution worldwide.
• We commit to strengthen global efforts to achieve zero emissions from international shipping by 2050 at the latest.

See full English text of G7 Ocean Deal here.