It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, June 27, 2022
HINDU NATIONALIST STATE
Activist Held as Court Strikes Petition Against Modi Ronojoy Mazumdar and Upmanyu Trivedi Sun, June 26, 2022 at 2:14 AM·1 min read (Bloomberg) -- Police detained an activist linked to a petition to probe Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in orchestrating deadly violence in Gujarat state in 2002, the Hindustan Times reported.
Teesta Setalvad, secretary of human rights group Citizens for Justice and Peace, was taken from her home in Mumbai by police on Saturday, and later transported to Ahmedabad in Gujarat, the organization said in a statement on Saturday. She has been detained by the Gujarat Anti Terrorism Squad on “trumped up charges” that are “part of an elaborate witch hunt,” it said.
Calls to Mumbai police were not answered while an official with the Gujarat police declined to comment. Setalvad didn’t immediately respond to calls and emails requesting comment.
Setalvad’s reported detention follows the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the petition on Friday against a special investigative team’s findings in 2012. A decade earlier, religious riots when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead. The Citizens for Justice and Peace was formed to advocate for the victims of that violence.
“It appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge,” the Supreme Court said in a judgment Friday. “All those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law.”
GEMOLOGY Ukraine war robs India's 'Diamond City' of its sparkle
Nivrita GANGULY Sat, June 25, 2022
Yogesh Zanzamera lays out his bed on the floor of the factory where he works and lives, one of around two million Indians polishing diamonds in an industry being hit hard by the Ukraine war.
The air reeking from the only toilet for 35-40 people, conditions at workshops like this in Gujarat state leave workers at risk of lung disease, deteriorating vision and other illnesses.
But Zanzamera and others like him have other more immediate worries: the faraway war in Europe and the resulting sanctions on Russia, India's biggest supplier of "rough" gemstones and a long-standing strategic ally.
"There are not enough diamonds. Because of that, there is not enough work," Zanzamera, 44, told AFP at the workshop, situated up some dingy stairs in Surat where he has worked since leaving school at 13.
"The war should end. Everybody's livelihood depends on the war ending."
His monthly pay packet of 20,000 rupees ($260) is already down 20-30 percent, he says.
But he is one of the lucky ones -- the local trade union estimates that between 30,000 and 50,000 diamond workers in Surat have lost their jobs.
- Rough times -
Originally founded as a port city at the mouth of the Tapi river, Surat earned a reputation as the "Diamond City of India" in the 1960s and '70s.
Now, some 90 percent of the world's diamonds are cut and polished in the bustling industrial city and elsewhere in the western state of Gujarat.
Traders in Surat's crowded Mahidharpura market openly trade diamonds worth millions of dollars on the streets each day, carrying the precious gems loose in paper wrappings.
"If it doesn't go through Surat, a diamond is not a diamond," said Chirag Patel, CEO of Chirag Gems.
Russian mining giants like Alrosa traditionally accounted for over a third of India's rough diamonds, but supply has all but stopped because of Western sanctions.
For Chirag Gems, Russia was even more important, accounting for half the 900 "roughs" that his firm turns into dazzling gems that sell anywhere from $150 to $150,000.
Using state-of-the-art scanning and laser-cutting machines, his factory is better than most, with air-conditioning and exhaust systems protecting workers from inhaling dangerous dust.
But supply has shrunk to a tenth of what it was in the months since Western sanctions cut Russia off from the SWIFT international payments network in March.
"We are not getting goods from Russia because the payments system is stuck due to the war," Patel, 32, told AFP, saying he is trying to bridge the gap with supplies from South Africa and Ghana.
- Demand at Tiffany's -
The June-to-September wedding season in the United States is a crucial period for diamond exporters, Patel says.
The US accounted for more than 40 percent of India's $24 billion exports of cut and polished diamonds in the financial year to March, data from the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) shows.
But along with supply, traders say demand from the United States and Europe, too, has nosedived in recent months as companies like Signet, Tiffany & Co, Chopard and Pandora refuse to buy diamonds sourced from Russia.
Workers like Dipak Prajapati have suffered the consequences. In May he lost a job in May that paid $320 a month to support his family of six.
"I called the company to ask when I could resume work, but they said they don't have any work for me and told me to stay home," the 37-year-old told AFP.
"Sixty percent of the jobs in Surat run on diamonds. Diamonds are the biggest industry in Surat. I don't know any work other than diamonds."
His layoff comes close on the heels of pandemic shutdowns.
"We didn't get any salaries for six to eight months. We had to borrow money from all sides to survive and are still paying back those loans," Prajapati said.
The Gujarat Diamond Workers' Union has asked Gujarat's chief minister for a 10-billion-rupee ($128-million) relief package for workers who have lost their jobs.
"We told him that if the situation does not improve in the coming days, our workers will be compelled to commit suicide," union vice-president Bhavesh Tank said.
"Surat has given the world so much," Tank says. "Surat has scrubbed diamonds for the entire world but our diamond workers are now getting scrubbed."
"We can only pray to God that the war will end. If the war does not end, we don't know how bad things will get."
ng/stu/oho
Vatican Says 'Pro Life' Activists Must Fight For Gun Control
AND END THE DEATH PENALTY Mary Papenfuss Sat, June 25, 2022 The Vatican hailed the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but said it is imperative that people who identify as “pro-life” also fight for critical life-protecting issues like gun control. “Being for life always means defending it against the threat of firearms, which unfortunately have become a leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the U.S.,” the Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, chided Saturday in an essay.
“Pro-life” is not just about opposing abortion, he pointed out. Anti-abortion activists must be concerned with all issues that threaten life, such as easy access to guns, poverty and rising maternity mortality rates, which are alarmingly high in the U.S., Tornielli emphasized.
The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. has climbed from 20.1 deaths of women per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 23.8 per 100,000 in 2020, he noted, citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And “strikingly,” maternal mortality rates are three times higher for Black women in the U.S., Tornielli added.
“Being for life, always, means asking how to help women welcome new life,” he added, noting that that 75% of women in America who have abortions live in poverty or are low-wage earners. And only 16% of workers in private industry have paid parental leave, he added.
“We can hope ... that the debate on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling will not be reduced to an ideological confrontation, but will prompt all of us ... to reflect on what it means to welcome life, to defend it, and to promote it with appropriate legislation,” Tornielli emphasized.
The U.S. Conference of Bishops and the Vatican’s Academy for Life praised the Supreme Court ruling on Friday. But the Academy for Life also called for social changes to help women keep their children.
Pope Francis celebrated families on Saturday, but didn’t mention the ruling. And he warned families not to be “poisoned by the toxins of selfishness, individualism [and] today’s culture of indifference and waste.”
WASTED TAXPAYER $ ON TRIP TO THE ALPS
G7 Leaders Call the Death of the Necktie at the 48th Summit in Germany
NONE OF THEM KNOW HOW TO TIE A WINDSOR KNOT
Hikmat Mohammed Mon, June 27, 2022
LONDON — Seven world leaders have declared the end of the necktie at the G7 Summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The annual gathering of the Group of Seven is never about fashion, however, every photo op sends a loud and clear message in the world of politics.
Everyone got the memo for the official 48th G7 Summit group photo on Sunday featuring Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi; Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; French President Emmanuel Macron; German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; U.S. President Joe Biden; British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
A price cap on Russian oil, supply of weapons to Ukraine, climate change and Africa’s potential famine is on the agenda for the next three days for the gentlemen to discuss, but under all that, so are the intentions of presenting their best image to the world.
After all, this isn’t just a press conference, it’s a stage to show a united front.
At the 47th G7 Summit held in Cornwall, England, last year, all the male politicians sported a necktie while gray clouds hovered over them in the group shot. Their somber suits and ties resembled the mood of the last two years.
A pandemic later and with the activewear industry expected to generate more than 95 billion dollars in the U.S. alone, the power suit no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.
The removal of the necktie is a departure from the expected stale presentation of world leaders — the seven white crisp shirts worn with blazers in flat hues is the Hollywoodification they’ve been searching for. It’s George Clooney’s signature recipe for the red carpet with two buttons undone that Draghi emulated to perfection.
“Traditionally, the tie is a badge of professionalism, distinction and success,” said Peter Bevan, a London-based menswear stylist, adding that it once carried gravitas, but now it’s being considered as “increasingly stuffy and conservative — becoming more casual since the pandemic in line with the rest of the world is perhaps a way for the politicians to remain relatable and relevant.”
Outside of the western world, the necktie carries no sentiment. It’s a sartorial tool used to project authority rather than having earned it.
New Zealand politician Rawiri Waititi called the accessory a “colonial noose” in 2021 after being ejected from parliament for wearing a traditional pendant called hei-tiki instead of a tie.
“Wearing a tie is wrapped up in notions of class, male privilege and status, which are concepts the younger generation are increasingly trying to reject,” Bevan said.
On the runways, ties are loosened and are being interpreted in new ways. For Thom Browne’s spring 2023 collection, necktie lengths got shorter, brighter and camper while models wore them with tweed miniskirts.
“The obligation to wear a tie day-to-day will become a thing of the past, but as they can bring such personality to a suit, I don’t think they’ll die out altogether. They’ll become solely fashion accessories rather than necessity,” Bevan explained.
The sartorial chatter was among the politicians themselves, too. When the leaders sat down for their first meeting of the day, Johnson asked if they should remove their jackets or doff further, which was met by a witty answer from one of his colleagues: “We all have to show that we’re tougher than Putin.”
Trudeau chipped in with “bare-chested horseback riding,” alluding to the images of Putin topless on a horse in southern Siberia’s Tuva region in 2009, to which European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen fired back with “horseback riding is the best.”
Conversing with fashion lightens the mood, but changing the course of a uniform can perhaps combat real change that’s much needed in the world right now.
THANKS GOP US Families brace for changes to pandemic-era free school meals
LISA RATHKE Mon, June 27, 2022 Students in a lunch line at Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School in Essex Junction, Vt., on June 9. (Lisa Rathke / Associated Press)
Before the pandemic, there was no room in the budget for Kate Murphy’s children to buy lunch at school. She and her husband would buy in bulk and make bag lunches at home. So the free school meals that were made available to students nationwide amid the crisis have brought welcome relief, especially since her husband lost his job last year at a bakery company that closed.
The free meals gave the Essex Junction, Vt., family one less thing to worry about.
“We make just too much money (literally by just a few dollars) to qualify for free or reduced lunches and other food-related benefits, but not enough to truly ever feel financially comfortable,” Murphy, a mother of four and administrator at a trust company, said by email.
The pandemic-era federal aid that made school meals available for free to all public school students — regardless of family income levels — is ending, raising fears about the effects in the upcoming school year for families already struggling with rising food and fuel costs.
For families already strained by inflation and the end of other federal help like expanded child tax credits, advocates say cuts to the aid could mean turning more frequently to food banks.
“Families across the country are facing a very difficult reality of having to choose between feeding their kids or filling up their gas tank or purchasing medicine,” said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer for Feeding America, a nonprofit network of food banks.
The rules are set to revert to how they were before the coronavirus pandemic, with families who are eligible based on income required to apply for their children to receive free or reduced-price lunch. Schools in predominantly low-income areas will be allowed to serve breakfast and lunch to everyone for free, as before.
Since waiving the eligibility requirement during the pandemic, the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees school meal programs, has seen the number of participating students soar.
During this past school year, about 30 million kids a day were getting free meals, compared to 20 million before the pandemic, said Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
At summer meal distributions, 1.3 billion meals and snacks were given out nationwide in fiscal year 2020 at a cost of $4.1 billion — an eightfold increase from the previous year in terms of meals and cost, according to the USDA.
A bill passed in Congress last week and signed by President Biden on Saturday aims to keep the rules around summer meals programs as they have been during the pandemic so that sites can operate in any community with need, rather than just where there’s a high concentration of low-income children, and offer to-go meals. It also provides flexibility for schools to make substitutions for certain types of food without being fined if they run into supply chain problems.
Advocates say the legislation will provide relief, but the timing has caused confusion around plans for summer meal distributions.
“It’s disappointing that the extension of the summer waivers would come so late that for the most part they’re not going to be able to stem the dramatic loss in summer meal sites that are happening this summer," said Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont.
For the next school year, some states have taken it upon themselves to keep school meals free for all students.
California and Maine made universal meals permanent last year, and Vermont is continuing free meals for all public school students for another year using surplus state education funding. In Massachusetts, House lawmakers included $110 million in the budget to extend universal school meals for another year, but the Senate version did not. Now both versions are before a conference committee. In Colorado, the Legislature passed a bill to ask voters this November whether to fund free universal breakfast and lunch at schools.
At the Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School in Vermont one recent day, eighth graders picked up freshly made pizza and Caesar salad and ate lunch with friends around round tables. Students said it was important to continue to provide free meals to all students.
“Not everybody has the same situation at home and it’s hard to learn at school when you’re super hungry, so I think free lunch, it makes it easier for everybody,” student Ethan Pringle said.
Not only do the free universal meals give kids nutrition so they can learn, but they also provide some reliability for kids and families during what is still a challenging time, Vermont state Rep. Karen Dolan said. It also removes the stigma of being a free or reduced-price lunch kid and the embarrassment of families who can’t pay their kids’ lunch accounts, officials said.
But some officials worry about paying for meals for children from families who could easily afford them.
Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott supports helping those in need but “will not support imposing such taxes, which would disproportionately impact the very people we are trying to help, in order to fund meals for children of affluent families,” spokesperson Jason Maulucci said.
Families and advocates say losing universal school lunch and breakfast next year would have been a hardship for families.
“Our kids have so much to worry about these days, and food shouldn’t be one of them,” Murphy said.
2022, Ninna Mörner (ed.), The Many Faces of the Far Right in the Post-Communist Space: A Comparative Study of Far-Right Movements and Identity in the Region (=CBEES State of the Region Report 2021) (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2022): 42-60.
PRISON NATION USA
Prison Policy Initiative
Updated charts provide insights on racial disparities, correctional control, jail suicides, and more
New data visualizations expose the harms of mass incarceration
Here at the Prison Policy Initiative, we know a strong visual can drive home a point, change someone’s mind, or spur a person to action. It is why data visualizations are a core part of our research and communications strategy.
We usually only update our data visualizations about mass incarceration when a new report or briefing requires it. However, some graphs are so powerful that they warrant special treatment. In recent months, new data has been released about jail suicides, racial disparities, probation, and state incarceration rates. So we’ve updated a few of our most impactful charts with this new data to equip advocates, lawmakers, and journalists with the most up-to-date information available.
These updated charts show how people of color, particularly Black and Native American people, are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States.
Visit our Racial Justice page for more reports, briefings, research, and visualizations focused on the intersection of race and mass incarceration.
State policies drive mass incarceration
While the activities of Congress often grab headlines, it’s state legislatures that have a chance to make the most progress toward ending mass incarceration.
That’s because, as these charts make clear, state governments and their policies are responsible for the vast majority of people incarcerated in this country. And while the COVID pandemic has led to recent drops in incarceration rates, without intentional action from the states, these reductions will almost certainly be short-lived.
Suicide is the single leading cause of death for people in jail, a fact that isn’t surprising considering the mountains of research that shows incarceration is inherently bad for a person’s mental health. As this updated chart shows, someone in jail is more than three times as likely to die from suicide as someone in the general U.S. population.
For many people, their prison sentence tells only part of the story of their involvement with the criminal legal system. As a result of prohibitively high cash bail, they are often held in a local jail for weeks, months, or even years before they are convicted of a crime. And then, once they’re released from prison, they often remain under state supervision through parole for years, living with the constant threat of being jailed for a technical violation.
As these updated charts show, pretrial detention is the driver of jail population growth over the last 20 years, and roughly half of all people under correctional control are on probation. And despite recent pandemic-related reductions in these numbers, they’re still too high and likely to increase as pandemic slowdowns ease.
Visit our Probation and Parole page for more reports, briefings, and visualizations that show that someone isn’t free just because they’re not behind bars. And check out our Jails and Bail page for more research on these institutions’ roles in the carceral system.
We’ve also updated the underlying data behind some of these charts in our data toolbox to empower advocates, lawmakers, and journalists to show the consequences of mass incarceration in their communities. If you’re using this data in your work, we want to know about it.
US Congress candidate Geoff Young: Abolish CIA, stop arming Nazis, end drug war
US Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky on an anti-war platform, explains why he wants to abolish the CIA, dismantle AFRICOM, end the war on drugs, and stop arming Nazis in Ukraine.
Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton interviewed US Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky’s 6th district on an anti-war platform calling for abolishing the CIA.
We discussed Young’s 12-point program, which also seeks to “End the failed ‘War on Drugs,'” prevent nuclear war, establish a Medicare-for-All system of universal healthcare, dismantle the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), increase taxes on billionaires and millionaires, and “Get Big Money out of politics.”
Young won Kentucky’s Democratic primary election on May 17. But he explained that the state’s Democratic Party branch has refused to support him against incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr.
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, has in fact publicly criticized Young over his opposition to the proxy war in Ukraine.
Young said he is “probably the only anti-war Democrat” running for Congress.
Preventing nuclear war “is my main concern. That’s been my main concern for 40, 45 years,” he explained.
And “it’s most likely to happen, looking at today’s situation, when there is a tense, perhaps a war going on, such as Ukraine. And that’s where the chances of an accidental nuclear war are the highest,” he warned.
Young criticized the US government for sending weapons to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Avoz Regiment, which has officially been part of the country’s National Guard since a 2014 Washington-sponsored coup.
At the top of his campaign website, young4ky.com, Young has a promise: “Unlike Andy Barr, I will never vote to send weapons to Nazis.”
In the interview with Multipolarista, Young stressed that Nazis “are enemies of humanity.”
“I thought Americans were against Nazis in general, you know, since World War II,” he added.
Young noted that sitting congressmen like Barr “can’t acknowledge the fact that the federal government, both parties, have been sending weapons to Nazis since 2014, in Ukraine.” “One of my objectives during the next five months is to inform every voter in the sixth district, regardless of what party they are registered as, that Andy Barr knew about it since 2014 or 2015, and he never objected, and now he wants President Biden to do it even more,” Young explained.
When asked why he wants to abolish the CIA, Young said, “Since it was founded in 1947, right after World War II, the CIA has been the worst, most well-funded, most powerful, most dangerous, most deadly terrorist organization in the world. It still is today.”
“We’ve got 16 other intelligence agencies. Let’s get rid of the worst one and save some money,” he added.
Young also condemned the US government’s so-called war on drugs, arguing “it has never been effective at fighting addiction. It has always been a bonanza for drug smuggling, you know, organized crime. The CIA has made a whole lot, billions of dollars on the Afghan opium and heroin trade, for example.”
“The war on drugs is just wrong-headed from the start,” he continued. “It should be treated as a public health issue, as an addiction treatment issue, and not as a criminal issue, where people get thrown in prison.”
Young stressed that the drug war has hurt his state in particular. “The overdose problem in Kentucky has been horrible for years. We’ve been losing thousands of people a year, because they get poisoned by the stuff they buy on the street.”
“And the harm reduction approach, the public health approach, would reduce all of that,” he argued.
Long road ahead to hammer out UN biodiversity blueprint Laure FILLON Sun, June 26, 2022
Delegates from almost 200 nations have made little progress towards hammering out a blueprint for a global pact to protect nature from human activity, after almost a week of difficult talks in Nairobi.
The meetings wrapping up Sunday were aimed at ironing out differences among the UN Convention of Biological Diversity's 196 members, with barely six months before a crucial COP15 summit in December.
The ambitious goal is to draw up a draft text outlining a global framework to "live in harmony with nature" by 2050, with key targets to be met by 2030.
Many hope the landmark deal, when finalised, will be as ambitious in its goals to protect life on Earth as the Paris agreement was for climate change.
But progress at the talks in the Kenyan capital was slow.
"Most of the time was spent on technical bickering, with major decisions left unresolved and postponed for the COP," said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature.
"It is now critically important that environment ministers and heads of state engage, take ownership and rescue this process," he told AFP.
Delegates in Nairobi spent hours discussing formulations or seeking to introduce new elements, instead of reconciling differing viewpoints and refining rather than overhauling the text.
- 'Security issue for humanity' -
One delegate on Saturday night spoke of feeling "desperate". Another described the Nairobi round as "a step" and voiced hope for further informal meetings before December.
"We need to continue with the dialogue with the intention to simplify and reduce the brackets (on the disputed issues) and alternatives," said Vinod Mathur, head of India's National Biodiversity Authority.
For that to happen, warned Francis Ogwal of Uganda, one of the two co-chairs of the Kenya negotiations, "there has to be a very big shift of mind in the way we are negotiating".
Proposals include a global commitment to set aside at least 30 percent of both land and oceans as protected zones by the end of the decade, as well as efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution.
But time is running out, with one million species threatened with extinction and tropical forests disappearing, while intensive agriculture is depleting the soil and pollution is affecting even the most remote areas of the planet.
"It's not any longer an ecological issue only... It is increasingly an issue that affects our economy, our society, our health, our wellbeing," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told a press conference.
"It is a security issue for humanity."
- 'Crucial' to fix food system -
Lambertini accused some countries of using a "delaying tactic", pointing the finger at Brazil in particular. Behind the scenes, Argentina and South Africa were also getting the blame.
One of the main stumbling blocks concerns agriculture, particularly targets for a reduction in pesticides and fertilisers.
The European Union wants to see the pesticide issue specifically mentioned in the text, but "there is little support" for that position, according to one delegate.
Delegates from the Global South have highlighted the need to produce more, with much of the planet undergoing a major food security crisis, and reject any reference to agroecology, the use of ecological principles in farming.
"Agriculture is currently responsible for 70 percent of biodiversity loss," said Guido Broekhoven of WWF International, adding that it was "absolutely crucial" to fix a system where 30 percent of food goes to waste.
Countries are also divided on the issue of the funding needed to implement the biodiversity goals.
Brazil, backed by 22 countries including Argentina, South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt and Indonesia, renewed calls for rich countries to provide at least $100 billion a year until 2030 to help developing countries preserve their rich biodiversity.
The African bloc is also asking for a fund dedicated to biodiversity, according to one country delegate.
Although leaders of 93 countries committed in September 2020 to ending the biodiversity crisis, the issue is struggling to gain as much traction on the international political agenda as climate change.
"There is also a need to see where our political leaders want us to be," said Canada's Basile van Havre, co-chair of the Kenyan talks.
"We're looking to see who’s going to step up to pick up that ball."
laf/txw/yad
Ailing oceans in state of 'emergency', says UN chief
Marlowe HOOD
Mon, 27 June 2022
A long-delayed conference on how to restore the faltering health of global oceans kicked off in Lisbon on Monday, with the head of the UN saying the world's seas are in crisis.
"Today we face what I would call an ocean emergency," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates at the opening plenary, describing how seas have been hammered by climate change and pollution.
Humanity depends on healthy oceans.
They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential protein and nutrients to billions of people every day.
Covering 70 percent of Earth's surface, oceans have also softened the impact of climate change for life on land.
But at a terrible cost.
Absorbing around a quarter of CO2 pollution -- even as emissions increased by half over the last 60 years -- has turned sea water acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon.
And soaking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive marine heatwaves that are killing off precious coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen.
"We have only begun to understand the extent to which climate change is going to wreak havoc on ocean health," said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank's global lead for the blue economy.
Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a garbage truck's worth of plastic every minute, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
On current trends, yearly plastic waste will nearly triple to one billion tonnes by 2060, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
- Wild fish stocks -
Microplastics -- now found inside Arctic ice and fish in the ocean's deepest trenches -- are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.
Solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production.
Global fisheries will also be in the spotlight during the five-day UN Ocean Conference, originally slated for April 2020 and jointly hosted by Portugal and Kenya.
"At least one-third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected," Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist for US-based NGO Oceana, told AFP.
"Destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity in many coastal waters and on the high seas."
One culprit is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken last week by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce handouts to industry will hardly make a dent, experts said.
The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a boom in electric vehicle battery construction.
Scientists say poorly understood seabed ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disrupted.
Another major focus will be "blue food", the new watchword for ensuring that marine harvests from all sources -- wild caught and farmed -- are sustainable and socially responsible.
- Protected areas -
Aquaculture yields -- from salmon and tuna to shellfish and algae -- have grown by three percent a year for decades and are on track to overtake wild marine harvests that peaked in the 1990s, with each producing roughly 100 million tonnes per year.
The Lisbon meeting will be attended by ministers and even a few heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, but is not a formal negotiating session.
But participants will push for a strong oceans agenda at two critical summits later this year -- the COP27 UN climate talks in November, hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15 UN biodiversity negotiations, recently moved from China to Montreal.
Oceans are already at the heart of a draft treaty tasked with halting what many scientists fear is the first "mass extinction" event in 65 million years. A cornerstone provision would designate 30 percent of the planet's land and ocean as protected areas.
But preparatory negotiations in Nairobi ended on Sunday in deadlock.
"The agreement is at risk of collapsing on the question of finance," the environmental diplomacy lead for WWF France told AFP.
For climate change, the focus will be on carbon sequestration -- boosting the ocean's capacity to soak up CO2, whether by enhancing natural sinks such as mangroves or through geoengineering schemes.
At the same time, scientists warn, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gases is needed to restore ocean health.
The United Nations does not charge a fee for participation in the Ocean Conference or any of its events. When: 27 June to 1 July 2022. Where: Lisbon Altice Arena Convention Center, located in ...
Per Anders Rudling
