The United States welcomes Greece’s announcement that it will host the ninth Our Ocean Conference in 2024.

A healthy ocean is essential for the health and prosperity of human civilization.  The ocean regulates our climate and weather, generates approximately half of the planet’s oxygen, and provides food and livelihoods for billions of people.  Yet the ocean is under threat.  Greenhouse gas emissions are changing ocean chemistry, undermining ecosystems, and impairing the ocean’s regulatory functions.  Meanwhile, other human activities, such as overfishing and plastic pollution, are causing potentially irrevocable harm to the ocean’s flora and fauna.

Our Ocean Conferences bring together governments and non-state actors – including private-sector, philanthropic, academic, and non-governmental representatives – to make concrete commitments to protect ocean health and security.  Since the Our Ocean Conferences began in 2014, they have resulted in more than 1,800 commitments worth nearly $108 billion.

The seventh Our Ocean Conference, hosted by Palau and the United States, was the first Our Ocean Conference to be hosted by and held in a Small Island Developing State.  It closed with more than 410 commitments worth approximately $16.35 billion across the six issue areas of the conference, which included climate change, sustainable fisheries, sustainable blue economies, marine protected areas, maritime security, and marine pollution.

Panama will host the eighth Our Ocean Conference in 2023.

For media inquiries, please contact OES-PA-DG@state.gov.