FACTS AND MESSAGES
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8 June - World Ocean Day “Caring for the future of the Blue Planet, you have made a difference”
	The UN General Assembly “Resolves that, as from 2009, the United Nations will designate 8 June as World Oceans Day.” (Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, A/RES/63/111, Oceans and the law of the sea, Paragraph 171)
This great success is the result of the joint worldwide effort of all of us over the last years. "World Ocean Day" was first proposed in 1992 by the Government of Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and endorsed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO after 1998 International Year of the Ocean.
	Since 2003, with the support of the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands, the World Ocean Network and The Ocean Project have been working closely to promote and coordinate World Ocean Day events and activities with aquariums, zoos, museums, science centres, conservation and education organisations, NGOs and businesses around the world.
Jean-Michel Cousteau, President of Ocean Futures Society and Chair of the World Ocean Network Committee of Honour, prompted the first efforts to advocate World Ocean Day at the UN in 2003. Then your endeavours to promote and celebrate the World Ocean on June 8 every year enabled us to regularly report on World Ocean Day successfully increasing activities to the participants of the United Nations Informal Consultation Process on the Law of the Sea.
With the Ocean Project, we also circulated a petition to the United Nations urging them to officially recognize World Ocean Day. Now we are facing a new challenge: to use World Ocean Day at the best for public mobilisation on ocean matters. This year, together with The Ocean Project, we propose a common World Ocean Day theme: 2009 special theme: “one ocean, one climate, one future” In line with the United Nations Framework for the Convention on Climate Change negotiations and in link with the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands, WON will hold a series of activities to highlight ocean and climate issues with the objective to make a significant contribution to the Conference of Parties to be held in Copenhagen next December. Click here to see this piece of news in Spanish (PDF, 32 Kb)
Click here to download WON's Calendar for 2009 (PDF, 259 Kb) You can read PDF documents with Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this software, click here or on the logo to download it for free.