People of Faith Speaking Out for Oceans (UNOC3)

by Grove Harris, M.Div

The Temple of Understanding’s work towards the health of oceans continues through our participation in this year’s UN Oceans Conference, UNOC3, upcoming in Nice, France.  The Ocean and Climate Platform is online here.

The Faith in the Ocean Declaration and Movement invites signatures and participation through our website. The collaboratively written declaration, available to read online, calls for a set of actions, including:

1. Spiritual Practice: Encourage collective and individual meditation, prayer, and contemplation to generate the energy of love, respect, and gratitude for the ocean, fostering a deeper spiritual connection and sense of responsibility for its well-being.
2. Realignment: Realign our relationship with the ocean, recognizing humanity’s deep dependence on it while acknowledging the harm we have caused and our responsibility to support its restoration and protection. 
3. Education: Promote awareness building and education on ocean conservation including science-based research and traditional knowledge.  For example, learning about the harmful impacts of deep sea mining and geo-engineering of the ocean. Emphasize the need for lifestyle changes that reduce harm to marine ecosystems, encouraging more sustainable living practices that align with the well-being of the ocean.
4. Community Engagement: Foster community engagement in ocean protection efforts and defend ocean advocates who are threatened for their calls to justice.
5. Policy Advocacy: Urge governments to adopt and introduce policies that protect the ocean such as the ratification of the BBNJ (Agreement on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, or High Seas Treaty).
6. Partnerships: Encourage partnerships between faith leaders, scientists, academics, and policymakers.  
7. Integrated Approach: Advocate for a more holistic and integrated approach to environmental issues, aligning efforts across UNFCCC, CBD, Plastics, and land degradation and desertification initiatives.

Coming from an understanding that…

“We acknowledge the dynamic exchange of energy between humanity and the ocean, recognizing that the ocean absorbs and reciprocates the energy we generate. As faith communities, we commit to consciously generating and offering energy of love, respect, and gratitude for the ocean. Through our collective and individual spiritual practices, we seek to cultivate values of reverence, stewardship, humility, responsibility and interconnectedness, ensuring that our relationship with the ocean is one of harmony and care.”

The side event, Faith in the Ocean: A Multifaith Call to Action for Ocean Flourishing, will be in person in France, with some videos and reporting coming afterwards for those interested from afar. 

Please also sign on to the Multi-faith Declaration written by Faiths for UNOC3, available online here.

Organizer Gopal Patel writes about this declaration in a recent post with the Forum on Religion and Ecology, entitled “Journey Through the Sacred: A Multi-faith Invitation to Protect Our Ocean”, available online. 

“As the world prepares for the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), a new multi-faith declaration for the ocean offers a unique spiritual reflection on the ocean’s layered significance as well as its urgent peril. It invites us to see the ocean not only as an ecosystem or economic resource, but as a teacher, offering wisdom that can guide humanity toward a more mindful relationship with water, the source of all life. 

This builds on practices found across many religious traditions, where the natural world is seen as a sacred “text,” offering signs, symbols, and wisdom through which the sacred can be revealed and moral insight can be drawn. This multi-faith declaration organizes its reflection through the ocean’s vertical zones, from the sunlight zone through the twilight zone and into the midnight zone.“

These direct links may be helpful for signing on.  Our colleagues have brought on many prominent religious organizations and are working with UNEP’s Faith for Earth.

• Declaration Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UHuKOqR1exK_hrOq_0wfbeSiwH2DN5r0WmTm4wHKai4/edit?usp=sharing 
• Sign-on Form:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScLvQO7mYIfA0EZBoNFzmEsSfbKJpdz6ysJHh4J6a_wfvvEaw/viewform?usp=preview 

There is so much need for raising up of our voices, in all the venues available to us.  It is important to support the range of efforts underway, as well as to collaborate and work efficiently. 

Many people have concluded that so much of the UN’s work is compromised by corporate capture, whether by direct funding or by preferential treatment and using the multinational spaces for profiteering. Alternative spaces offer important critique, such as:

8–9 June 2025
Conference of the Ocean Peoples
C-OP2: Reclaiming Our Future Within the Oceans Organised by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP)

A Global Fisher People’s Summit countering the corporate-led UNOC3

Theme: Defying Colonial Capitalism: Uniting for the Future of Earth & Oceans

8 June (Ocean Day) – 9 June 2025
15h CET / 10h Brasilia / 18:30 Sri Lanka / 7:00 Belize
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81076834799?pwd=SXO4GXneFyNiYc7u9TkeZVSujay4kb
Meeting ID: 810 7683 4799 | Passcode: 371065

Organizers write:

We defend:

• Maritime and customary rights.
• Food sovereignty
• Recognition, redistribution, reparations.

This webinar will also be live-streamed on YouTube here at 9 AM Eastern time on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

The Oceans conference has been successful with substantial commitments and building of international efforts to protect and conserve the ocean.  We commend the National Catholic Reporter for its coverage, which you can read here.

Blair Nelson, Executive Director of Waterspirit, recapped her experience of the conference, which you can read here.

The Temple of Understanding, as part of the Mining Working Group, was part of the effort to host this excellent webinar, “Disturbance in the Deep: a Rights-Based and Values-Based Approach to Deep Sea Conservation”. If you need a one-stop introduction to the advocacy, the science, the values, the legal concerns, and the insanity of risking our oceans to this very destructive form of extraction, this is an excellent use of your time. It featured the highly knowledgeable Andrew Whitmore (Deep Sea Mining Campaign), Bobbi-Jo Dobush (DSM expert), and Rev. James Bhagwan (Pacific Conference of Churches).

It is increasingly important that we work collectively, in support and coordination, using our communications technologies to include those who do not travel to these events, and to support the advocacy efforts of those who are able to attend in person. This community of advocates from diverse faiths and no faith ensures no one carries the whole load, the carbon footprint of travel is minimized, and the power of coming together is centered and sustaining for those involved.

Next steps after the Oceans conference: