Whistleblowers can be part of the solution as the ocean summit targets threats to the sea

By Hollyn Walters

This week’s World Ocean Summit in Abu Dhabi will address five major threats to the oceans: overfishing, coastal pollution, habitat destruction, warming, and acidification. The goal of the summit is to build conceptual bridges across governments and organizations in order to produce technical, financial, and governmental solutions to ocean harm.

Leaders in sustainability and ocean economies will develop partnerships and initiatives between advocacy organizations and governments to promote the healing of our oceans.

The event, which was organized by The Economist, will bring together policy-makers, technology innovators and ocean entrepreneurs to explore how they can work together to promote marine sustainability.

While advocates in Abu Dhabi are building their environmentally-friendly bridges, citizens across the world can assist by blowing the whistle on those who contribute to the destruction of the oceans.Whistleblowers are essential to the dissolution of environmental criminal activity occurring in all public and private sectors. 

The ocean has been choked by pollution, fish such as the bluefin tuna have been illegally hunted to near extinction, and climate change continues to slowly kill entire ocean environments like the Great Barrier Reef. It’s imperative that we find solutions to these problems and that we are open to different ways of slowing down the degradation of Earth’s biggest habitat. Whistleblowers can help.

The National Whistleblower Center has been working to legally advise individual and non-governmental whistleblowers, and has pushed for overall stronger legal protections for whistleblowers from around the world.

In January, a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Don Young (R-AK) and John Garamendi (D-CA). The Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act of 2019 (H.R. 864) contains whistleblower incentives to combat trafficking, and if enacted, would enhance the ability of informants worldwide to detect and report wildlife crimes. The National Whistleblower Center is spearheading a grassroots campaign to support this bill and is urging the public to send messages to lawmakers expressing their support for the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act

Hollyn Walters

National Whistleblower Center