One Ocean Week 2025

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Friends of the ocean,

I have to admit - I love the ocean. I love being on it, and being in it, playing. And here in Bergen I was in the Navy learning how to navigate it. But even though we love the ocean, we know that the ocean is not in good health, and we need to bring the ocean back in balance.

Friends, once again we gather here in Bergen for the One Ocean Week. It is great to be among people with purpose and passion for the ocean. I am particularly happy that we have youth leaders from all over the world with us here today. We need your voices, your knowledge and ideas. Thank you for being here.

This week we are preparing for the UN Ocean Conference in Nice in June. We are hard at work for the ocean, everybody! And we have to stay committed for as long as it takes. We will be reliable partners in these efforts. Partners who will not gamble with the most pressing issue of our time: To bring the planet back into balance – and the ocean back into balance.

Before I continue, I will tell you why I am a cautious optimist on behalf of the ocean at this point in history. There are at least three areas where we see a positive development:

• First: There is a growing understanding that ocean management needs a holistic approach – balancing environmental protection, sustainable production, social equity and economic growth.
• Secondly: Driven by the ocean Panel and the UN Decade for Ocean Science, more and more countries are committing to sustainably managing 100 % of their ocean areas – and to protect 30 %.
• And finally: New technologies are being developed constantly – for surveillance of the state of the ocean – and other useful purposes.

The theme of One Ocean Week 2025 is Sea Level Rise and Coastal Resilience for a Sustainable Future.

I would like to take you with me to a few of the places I have visited. Places where the vulnerability of small island states are visible and evident. And places that show the interconnectedness between the north and the south – the Arctic and the Pacific.

But before I take you on this journey, I would like to point out that right here in Bergen, we are also exposed. Right outside of here - at Bryggen - local authorities are preparing for a local scenario where the ocean will rise by as much as 80 cm by the end of this century.

But now - lets go north. This picture is from Svalbard. 17 years ago, I met this beautiful polar bear. We were really close, but still safe – we were onboard a research vessel. We were travelling in Svalbard and Greenland to learn more about the effect of climate change in the Arctic. And we, that was then Crown Prince Frederik, now King, of Denmark, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweeden, and myself.

As you may see, it was a while ago, and we were all young and enthusiastic. Now we are only enthusiastic... well apart from Victoria, who is still young... The passion for the ocean, and how climate change effects the ocean and coastal areas, is still there. Because as we learn more, as we see more alarming evidence of the effect, we have no choice but to engage ourselves.

Ten years later, in 2019, I visited Fiji, Samoa and Tonga the South Pacific in my capacity as UN Development Program goodwill ambassador.

In the small island states of the South Pacific, floods are destroying farmland and coral reefs are disappearing. Land and people are threatened. It made a lasting impression on me to see how the villages are struggling to keep the water of the rising ocean away. At the same time, I was impressed by people’s resilience, doing what it takes to adapt to these changes. One of the many actions taken, was planting mangrove, which the people of Tonga let me take part in - to create as barrier.

I got the chance to study life under water with my own eyes, both the beauty and the vulnerability of the threatened coral reefs.

And this is when the interconnectedness between the north and south becomes brutally clear: We live on the other side of the planet from the South Pacific. Here up north, the consequences of climate change also are evident. We have glaciers that are melting. The Arctic is, in a way, the heat sensor of the world. Research shows that the arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979.

And we know that when the glaciers are melting in the north, the sea level rises in the tropical south.

In 2022, I was lucky enough to be back in Greenland – on a research trip organised by the University of Tromsø. And we learned about the melting ice – and how this effects on life on earth.

This is one of many visible proofs of our interconnectedness as a global community. We live in different parts of the world. But we share one planet – connected by the ocean.

So, ladies and gentlemen, To quote the wise minds of the Ocean Panel: “The ocean gives us life. It feeds us, entertains us, connects us and inspires us, and powers our success...”

And because of this, the next speaker – UN Ocean ambassador Peter Thomson – keeps reminding us: “There cannot be a healthy planet without a healthy ocean.”

I wish you all the best in your important efforts, and hope you will have fruitful discussions during One Ocean Week here in Bergen. Thank you very much for your attention.