NEWS :
Let’s all become
“GENERATION SEA”!
Lions are committed to raising awareness of the marine environment and are committed partners for the Year of the Sea
By Caroline Zavattoni, Chair of the Board 2024-2025,
and Anne-France Didier, pilot of Génération Mer.
The 2024-2025 Board of Governors, represented by its Chair Caroline Zavattoni, accompanied by Françoise Theuriot, Governor for the National Service Commission, signed a partnership this summer with Éric Banel, Director General of the Directorate General of Maritime Affairs, Fisheries and Aquaculture (DGAMPA), a central administration led by the Ministry of the Sea and Fisheries.
Raising awareness of the protection of marine environments
This partnership will be an opportunity for the governors, clubs and Lions of France to commit to a maritimization of minds in order to contribute to the awareness of marine environments and their protection.
The Year of the Sea, an opportunity for all Lions to raise awareness
to the challenges of the ocean!
In 2023, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron announced a National Year of the Sea 2024-2025 to accompany the hosting of the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), the 3rd edition of which will be held in Nice in June 2025. Jointly organized by the governments of France and Costa Rica, UNOC3 follows the first two held in New York in June 2017 and in Lisbon in June 2022, respectively. The objective of these meetings is to provide the solutions that the ocean needs to meet and solve the main challenges facing all of humanity.
The ocean is indeed an essential element of planetary functioning, it regulates the climate that allows us to currently inhabit the Earth, and it has already absorbed 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial era.
It feeds and cares for us, it is a potential source of energy for the decarbonization of our activities… and is the means of transport for 90% of our trade in goods and 99% of our digital information.
Actors mobilized for the good health of the ocean
Stakeholders are mobilized for the good health of the marine environment and the sustainable management of the ocean. A multidisciplinary subject, the sea is today, in France, largely managed by the General Directorate of Maritime Affairs, Fisheries and Aquaculture, the central administration of the Ministry of the Sea and Fisheries, whose mission is to better reconcile the different uses of the increasingly coveted maritime space, while ensuring better protection of our resources and our marine environments.
The Génération Mer collective
Initiated in 2018 by Catherine Chabaud, then delegate for the sea and the coastline at the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, Génération Mer brings together actors from different backgrounds (from scientific culture, sportsmen and sea users, foundations, expeditions), committed to a better knowledge of the challenges of the marine world. With around fifty members and several heads of citizen mobilisation networks, Génération Mer brings together educational resources of all types to enable different actors to raise awareness among many audiences about the sustainable management of the ocean. Because we are all concerned about the future of the ocean, and even if we do not benefit from its proximity, the ocean is the receptacle of all the discharges from our watersheds and, above all, offers us services to all. Génération Mer joins forces with partners who shine on the territory so as not to forget the citizens far from our shores. Getting closer to the Lions Club, which with its 15 districts, 1,200 clubs and 22,400 volunteers, is committed to actions of general interest in a humanist spirit is obvious.
A partnership at the national level, labelled “Year of the Sea”
Génération Mer is building a general framework for the Multiple District 103 France of Lions International to mobilize and involve its clubs in informing and raising awareness about the preservation of the healthy ocean. Génération Mer is committed to training local facilitators or bringing together actors for events set up by the clubs. The clubs of the District multiple 103 France will thus be able to be involved and organize events on the themes and challenges of the ocean. This partnership, based on an exchange of information and resources, can be an opportunity for each district and clubs to appropriate tools to mobilize its territory to a better knowledge of the challenges of the ocean for everyone.
Each district, as part of this partnership and the Year of the Sea, will have a sea ambassador referent who will support the clubs in their projects. Génération Mer will then be able to offer support for the development of each project by providing educational tools, but also training or putting you in touch with speakers or local associations. This collaboration is an unprecedented opportunity for the Lions of France! The Lions Club’s actions related to the ocean will be nationally labelled “Year of the Sea”. The objective is for each club to appropriate the marine environment according to its desires and affinities and to find, via Génération Mer, the most suitable means to carry out actions around this major theme.
Let’s all become “Sea Generation” so that future generations have a healthy ocean, a common good of humanity.
