Thank you very much for inviting me to share a few remarks at this event organized by the Paris Peace Forum, the Finance Center for South-South Cooperation, and the Center for China and Globalization, on the occasion of this year’s edition of the China Development Forum.
The three topics you have chosen for this discussion—namely Ocean conservation, science, and the blue economy—are indeed three areas in which I believe cooperation between China and Europe is both necessary and possible.
I see two main reasons for this.
First, ocean governance has become a major issue for both of us, from different perspectives. We have both been involved—and even in a leadership role—in the negotiations that led to the Kunming-Montreal Framework as well as to the BBNJ agreement. Two recent major achievements in international governance. We therefore have genuine credibility stemming from these efforts.
Second, in line with this strategy, we have also deployed policies and instruments in the areas of conservation, decarbonization, science, and the blue economy. We, on both sides, are also walking the talk, thus enhancing our credibility..
Let me briefly illustrate this with what is happening in the field of science, which I believe is the number one priority which I believe we should share.
The fundamental reality is that we face a massive knowledge gap regarding the ocean. What scientists are telling us is that we know only one third of what we need to know to act effectively to restore our marine ecosystems.
Scientists also tell us that if we continue to generate knowledge at the pace of the past decades, it will take us about 80 years to fill our knowledge gap, whereas we have only 20 years left to act decisively. Beyond that, it will be too late.
The solution, therefore, is to find a shortcut to conventional physical exploration by leveraging digital technology, through the development of digital twins of the ocean capable of simulating complex hydrospheric systems and to help us testing various scenarios and options for Ocean regeneration, protection, de-pollution, or the blue economy
From this perspective, China is already developing high-resolution digital twins, particularly in coastal areas, such as Guangdong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Xiamen. These projects are based on collaborations between public agencies, private companies, and academic institutions. They include, for example, advanced 3D visualizations of coastal “what if” scenarios to improve disaster preparedness scenarios, or applications to develop more sustainable navigation or fishing;
For our part, in the European Union, we launched the construction of a European digital twin of the ocean in 2020, which is expected to be fully operational by 2030. This project is part of the EU research and development program. It is based on a “Lego like” method in order to integrate, bloc by bloc, different scientific disciplines and different geographic scales. Some applications are already in usage, produced by the Mercator Ocean consortium which is powered by European and international space and marine observation systems.
These parallel developments, open the way for greater convergence which would result from higher cooperation. In at least two directions.
The first concerns the methodology for building these digital twins, as well as improving our modelling know how.
The second concerns our ability to increase and, may be, share many more ocean observations. In this regard, a major development in recent years is the emergence of artificial intelligence, which can significantly increase the quality, the speed, the scale, and the use of these digital twins.
The possibility of cooperating more closely has already been mentioned during this lunch by Madame Pons, particularly to better protect certain marine where it is the most urgent. Why not think of the joint development of a digital twin of the Southern Ocean?
In conclusion, I am well aware that science diplomacy is not always easy. But I believe that, thanks to science, we now have a real opportunity to boost our efforts to regenerate marine ecosystems and put them back where they deserve to be, i.e. at the heart of life in our planet.
