For decades, the ocean has protected us from the impacts of climate change, absorbing 90 percent of the excess heat produced by global warming. It’s given us food and the genetic resources we use to produce life-saving drugs. As if that weren’t enough, it’s enabled millions of families to thrive in an economy based on its bounty.

The Motagua River, Guatemala's largest river, is severely polluted with sewage, solid waste, and other types of waste.

It flows into the Caribbean Sea, so contamination reaches those waters, as well as the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System - the world's largest transboundary reef - and the Honduran coast, causing unquantifiable social and environmental damage.

Polluting activities occur throughout the river basin, including sub-basins and micro-basins.

The ocean covers two-thirds of the planet. It is so immense and vast that 64% of its waters are outside any border, in a space known as the high seas.

It is an area that lies outside national jurisdictions and represents 40% of the Earth's surface.

Because of the wealth of marine life it harbors - including species new to science - the high seas are one of the world's greatest reserves of biodiversity. It is also a source of food and oxygen, regulates the climate, cushions the impacts of the climate crisis and sustains the livelihoods of fishing and tourism communities.

The decarbonization of productive and economic activities is essential and urgent to address the triple crisis –climate, pollution and biodiversity loss– that the world is facing.