World Ocean Day
In 2009, the United Nations designated June 8 as "World Ocean Day". World Ocean Day celebrations offer an opportunity for everyone to pay tribute to the Global Ocean and to express their personal link with the Sea.
The Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands and the World Ocean Network, Nausicaa and participants from all over the world will be celebrating World Ocean Day from the beginning of June! More than 200 organisations, from more than 50 countries all around the world will be encouraging the public to become Citizens of the Ocean and to preserve the Blue Planet. Come and join us!
World Ocean Day
World Ocean Day was proposed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.After the 2nd International Meeting “Acting together for the future of the blue planet”, which took place at Nausicaa in November 2002, the delegates – from nearly 120 organisations representing museums or aquariums, environmental and educational NGOs from across the world – decided to bring World Ocean Day to life. On 8 June 2003 they therefore organised World Ocean Day as a celebration of the Sea and its riches, with the aim of raising public awareness of the vital role played by Oceans and the need to preserve them. Every year, simultaneously across the 5 continents, around one hundred institutions organise, for their publics, a range of activities, actions for the sea and festivities (including all sorts of arts and craft, music, painting, sculpture, dance and prize competitions for the best action project for the ocean) with a common aim: celebrating the Ocean.
The Day is designed to inform all of us and also provide an opportunity to take part in action projects as a trueCitizen of the Sea, thereby contributing to a better stewardship of the Ocean for the well-being of us all. The 2003 event also provided the opportunity for those involved to officially launch the World Ocean Network with the aim of realising these objectives.
From 2003 Philippe VALLETTE, Managing Director of Nausicaa and Jean-Michel Cousteau, President of Ocean Futures Society led a delegation to persuade the United Nations to officially designate June 8 as World Ocean Day. Their efforts paid off with the official recognition in 2009 of World Ocean Day by the United Nations through its informal consultative process.
