Mission Starfish 2030: Restore Our Ocean and Waters

• Author: Pascal Lamy - Peter Heffernan - Klara Ramm - Boyan Slat - Antidia Citores - Darko Manakovski - Tiago Pitta e Cunha - Valentin Moldoveanu - Lowri Evans - Aristomenis Karageorgis - Alan Deidun - Gesine Meissner - Lea Kauppi - François Galgani - Maria Cristina Pedicchio - Geneviève Pons
• Pages: 24-48

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3 Mission Starfish 2030: Restore Our Ocean and Waters

As shown, unsustainable human activities and climate change, reinforced by

lacking understanding and inadequate governance, result in systemic,

interdependent and cumulative pressures that severely threaten the health of our

ocean, seas, coastal and inland waters. To pre serve these public goods and

replenish their value, we must look at the water cycle as a whole and

systematically tackle the identified challenges at source. To this end, this Mission

proposes a holistic and coherent 203 0 vision to address the various interacting

and cumulative threats to our ocean and waters. Its overall goal is to restore

our ocean and waters by 2030.

More concretely, inspired by the shape of the starfish, the Mission w ill address

the four interdependent challenges – unsustainable footprint, climate change,

lack of understanding, connection and investment, inadequate governance - by

proposing five overarching objectives for 2030:

 Filling the knowledge and emotional gap

 Regenerating marine and water ecosystems

 Zero pollution

 Decarbonising our waters, ocean, and seas and waters

 Revamping governance

Figure 6. Mission Starfish 2030 ©European Union, 2020

A child was walking along the beach after a storm and found it covered in starfish.

Upset at the sight, the child started putting them back into the water one by one.

An old man came up and said: “What are you doing? There are thousands of

starfish — way too many for you to make a difference.” The child looked at the

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old man, picked up a starfish, put it back into the ocean and said, “It made a

difference to that one” (adapted from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eisley).

The Apollo missions shot for the moon; this Mission reaches for the stars – the

starfish at our feet. Instead of developing space technology and exploring the

Moon in the national interest, the Mission Starfish 2030 sets out an ambitious,

holistic vision to regenerate our ocean and waters for the benefit of a ll life on

Earth.

The starfish’s natural habitat is our home. To care for the health of our ocean

and waters is fundamental to the health of our planet, our well-being and

prosperity. But the starfish, like all life on Earth, is threatened by our lifestyle.

To save the starfish, and ultimately all life on our blue planet, we can no longer

take its existence for granted, but must engage in a profound, systemic change

towards sustainability and resilience.

The starfish is a symbol of life under water. It is an extraordinary creature. For

example, its decentralised nervous system enables the regeneration of lost arms.

Likewise, the Mission Starfish 2030 will enable regeneration of marine and water

ecosystems via five interdependent objectives.

These five objectives are mutually supportive. The core is to regenerate

ecosystems by directly protecting and revitalising them. This already major task

will not be complete unless pollution is halted. But as climate change is intimately

linked to the health of the ocean, the transition to climate neutrality by

decarbonising the blue economy is also es sential. Such transformation must be

enabled by a revamped governance system that is fit for and up to the challenge.

Finally, such ambition of environmental, economic and social change must be

supported by society and science: the knowledge and emotional gap must be

filled as a cross-cutting supporting action.

Figure 7. Five mutually supportive objectives