Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection Participates in UN Ocean Conference

Rabat – The Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, is participating in Lisbon in the second United Nations Ocean Conference.

This second edition, which was initially scheduled to be held in 2020 after a first edition in 2018, is a great meeting to officially launch the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

This important initiative aims to provide very quickly the scientific knowledge that will allow to protect the oceans, whose role in the climate balance of the planet is now considered decisive, says a statement by the Foundation.

In its role as a founding member of the Ocean Decade Alliance, the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection is particularly involved in this decade for which Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, is the patron of the Alliance, a high-level grouping that is advancing the decade in the world.

In Lisbon, the Foundation organizes this Friday with its partners, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), the Portuguese Foundation Ocean Azul, FUGRO and the National Institute of Fisheries Research, a side event on the role of African NGOs in this decade of Ocean Sciences.

To this effect, the Foundation will expose the work carried out, during its 20 years of existence, with all its partners, notably the Moroccan civil society, in the protection of beaches, coasts, seas and oceans. It will present its actions of sensitization, education and awareness carried out with national and international associations and will explain the collaboration it has set up since 2021 with the IOC-UNESCO which pilots the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

It will also emphasize the “Bouknadel Declaration” launched publicly at the high-level forum of the Decade of the Ocean organized by the IOC UNESCO at this same conference in Lisbon, last June 30, which is intended as a fundamental tool to achieve the objectives of the Decade over the next eight years. A statement drafted on the sidelines of the second edition of the Foundations Dialogue by more than thirty of the most influential foundations in the philanthropic world from Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America from June 1-3 at the Hassan II International Center for Environmental Training.

Two announcements at the closing ceremony of the side event were revealed by the Foundation as part of its positioning on South-South and triangular cooperation in particular on the African continent: the granting of ten scholarships to African students to study Ocean Sciences, in collaboration with the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (AMCI) as well as the creation of a working group to mobilize African Foundations and NGOs in the Decade of Ocean Sciences, concluded the statement.