About
Endorsements
Global Leaders Endorse the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary
Dr. Jane Goodall
UN Messenger of Peace, Ocean Elder
“Humans have the most highly developed intellect of any species yet in the name of progress we are exploiting the natural resources of our planet and destroying the complex web of life with no thought for future generations. The oceans are not only rich in biodiversity, but also play a major role in regulating temperatures: we continue harming and polluting them at our peril. It is thus hugely important to establish the proposed Sanctuary for preserving the unique Arctic flora and fauna and thus helping to slow down climate change at this critical time.”
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Marine Biologist, National Geographic Explorer-In-Residence, Ocean Elder
“We need to convey a sense of urgency because the world is changing. The next ten years is likely to be the most important time in the next 10,000 years. We have options that we are going to lose within ten years unless we take action now. Every day options close, and this is particularly true in the Arctic. The Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary is an idea whose time has come, and I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people behind these efforts.”
Stanley Johnson
Former Member of the European Parliament; author of “Antarctica: the Last Great Wilderness”, and many other books; environmental campaigner
“I can think of few environmental issues that are more important than the designation of a Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary. Nor could this initiative be more timely, as the Arctic icecap shrinks and the prospects of an Arctic free-for-all, in terms of exploration and exploitation, as well as transport, loom larger by the day. MAPS needs to happen. And it needs to happen soon!”
Captain Paul Watson
Founder and CEO, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
“These vast white expanses of frigid wilderness at both the top and the bottom of our lush green and liquid blue planet solidify the ecological integrity of all that we are. The Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary must continue to hold the massive reserves of restless methane within its quiet lonely bosom where sleeping viruses remain safely captive. From the dark boreal forests to the groaning of the shifting floes there is the constant whispering reminder that this stark and desolate world is the key to our survival.“
Roger Payne, PhD
President and Founder of Ocean Alliance
“Everything we do that heats up the Earth heats up the Arctic much faster. Everything we break or spill in the Arctic takes the Arctic vastly longer to recover from. Arctic permafrost holds 4 to 5 times as much carbon as all human activities have released worldwide since 1850 (including all burning of all fossil fuels).
Arctic permafrost is about to thaw which will release much of its staggering quantity of CO2 and methane, which will make things hotter, which will thaw more permafrost, which will release yet greater amounts of methane and CO2, which will make things hotter still, and so on—a feedback loop that’s a race to oblivion. MAPS will slow this process. Back in 1961 we banned exploitation and resource extraction in the Antarctic. Let’s all get behind MAPS and save the Arctic to save the world.“
Peter Neill
Director, World Ocean Observatory
“The melting of Arctic ice is but one critical sign of the consequences of our indifference to Nature; the damage we have caused through emissions, toxins, waste, and consumptive behavior; and the intrusion of the same causative values and actions into a last wilderness with its rich plant and animal life heretofore isolated and unspoiled.
The high north is home to millions of human inhabitants with families, settlements, and traditions at risk: to protect it by international treaty and designation as a Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary will address the regeneration of this vulnerable ecosystem, protect the rights of the indigenous people, and serve as an exemplary system by which to sustain the environment worldwide in symbiotic alignment with principles of equity and social justice that can be applied elsewhere in our damaged world and to our threatened survival. The sea connects all things.”
Sigrid Luber
President, OceanCare
“In the past half century, human-generated marine noise has doubled every decade in many regions. Shipping is predicted to increase in the Arctic because of climate change. With this will come dramatic increases in marine noise. The Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary will provide a vital quiet zone for marine mammals and other marine life.”
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Youth Director, Earth Guardians
“MAPS is an incredibly important treaty to protect one of the most important places on earth. As a global community, we have a responsibility to defend the Arctic. World leaders have a responsibility to sign the MAPS Treaty and create that protected zone for our generation, and for every generation to come. A lot of what we fight for when it comes to climate justice is the protection of the Arctic because of the global implications if our ice caps melt. Now, more than ever, is the time to get the world on board with protecting the Arctic and with supporting MAPS.“
Julia Butterfly Hill
Environmental leader, bestselling author and speaker
“The natural world has been communicating with us since the beginning of time. Sadly, most of us have forgotten how to listen. We have blinded our eyes by greed, closed off our hearts out of fear, and shut down our minds, choosing to believe that we are not all deeply interconnected with each other and with all of life. We are now seeing the impact of our disease of disconnect. And future generations’ lives depend on the courage of our care and commitment right now. The work of MAPS is an important part in the healing of our relationship to the oceans of life.“
Louie Psihoyos
Executive Director of Oceanic Preservation Society,
Director of The Cove and Racing Extinction
“The Arctic Ocean ecosystem is unique and diverse, home to many species under threat. The Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary is an essential way to protect this ecosystem and give threatened populations a chance to recover.“
Sally Ranney
President and Chair of Earth Restoration Alliance (ERA)
“This is a bold and courageous vision. It can be realized. Global momentum will build as more and more people learn of the tangible, potential benefits of MAPS – to protect the magnificent, fragile, and besieged Arctic and its vast biodiversity of underwater life. Thank you. This is a potential game changer, and we are with you 100%.”
Vicki Goldstein
Founder of Inland Ocean Coalition
“You don’t have to see the ocean to protect it! Inland communities are often overlooked for the power they have in making positive changes for the ocean. We live in a time where non-coastal communities are realizing that they can take an active role in improving the impacts and relationships between the inland, the coastal, and the ocean. By working together, we can create the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary and protect a fragile ecosystem at risk.“
Wendy Benchley
International Seakeepers Award Winner and Co-Founder of Peter Benchley Ocean Awards
“Over the past 40 years we have witnessed the wholesale destruction of Earth’s fragile marine ecosystems. This destruction […] has created an unprecedented need to protect as much of the ocean as possible to allow our seas to recover and rejuvenate.
We have made progress over the past decade in establishing more than 5,000 MPAs covering more than 3 percent of the ocean, but the scientific consensus is that to create a fully sustainable ocean, we need to fully protect at least 30 percent. That’s a nearly ten-fold difference that must be addressed.
Given this urgency, I strongly support the creation of the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS), which will establish all ocean waters north of the Arctic Circle as a marine protected area, free from oil drilling and all other exploitation by companies and countries – forever.”
James A. Michel
Former President of the Republic of Seychelles
Founder and Chair of the James Michel Foundation
“The Arctic – no matter where we come from and where we live – is the common heritage of all humans. Its fate and future have serious consequences for all of us, not least for Small Islands Developing States (SIDS).
As the polar ice caps melt our low-lying islands face the imminent threat of being submerged and our people becoming environmental refugees. Some, for selfish short-term gains and profits, through their reckless activities and actions, are accelerating this process at an alarming rate. We cannot allow this to happen. We must respond to the great challenges we face with boundless skills and imagination.”
Jill Heinerth, FRCGS
Explorer in Residence
Royal Canadian Geographical Society
“The decisions we make about protecting the Arctic are urgent. Personal and policy choices made in the next few years will affect the future of humanity. Our indigenous leaders have signaled alarm bells that we cannot ignore. Whether you live in a coastal city or tropical paradise, climate change and the loss of sea ice will affect us all. By supporting the MAPS plan, we have a chance to gather global voices to communicate a cohesive way forward for the future of the Arctic and everything that relies on its protection.”
James Balog
Founder and Director
Earth Vision Institute
“When ice melts, sea levels rise. Through a million and a half frames of time-lapse imagery, I have captured the otherwise unfathomably rapid conversion of ice to water.
The best available science estimates that melting ice will cause sea levels to rise at least three feet by the end of this century. This will affect hundreds of millions of people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, China, and the coastlines of the USA. So the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary isn’t just protecting one of the last truly wild places on Earth. It’s helping to preserve the future of humanity.
Climate protection equals people protection.”
Yvo de Boer
Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
“Nothing short of the future of mankind is at stake if we do not immediately pivot to a green economy. With severe climate change impacts on our doorstep, the last thing we should be doing is opening up what little pristine Nature we have left to old economy activity.
MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary, is the only sane choice for the critically vulnerable Arctic ecosystem, for the sake of our seas, our atmosphere and all life.”
Scilla Elworthy
Ph.D.; Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee
Founder of the Oxford Research Group, Peace Direct, Business Plan for Peace
Co-Founder Rising Women Rising World; Author
“The Arctic Ocean is a climate linchpin for the planet that maintains the weather patterns we depend on for food and water. Once peaceful and frozen, this ecosystem is now threatened by melting, exploitation and militarization – putting all life on Earth at risk. We must end all plans to profit from the loss of Arctic sea ice, and stop the warring claims over what for millions of years has been a natural sanctuary.
I endorse the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary to halt our world’s destructive trajectory and pivot us to a peaceful, healthy future; and I call on those in places of influence or leadership to support its realization without delay.”
