Rémi Parmentier: Saving the Seas
Climate change and the environment have become hot-button political topics in recent years; but for some, the daily fight to save the planet is nothing new.
French-born climate activist and longtime Spanish resident Rémi Parmentier has been a passionately driven member of the international environmental movement for over 40 years. He was a founding member of Greenpeace International, a crew member on the first voyages of the iconic ship the Rainbow Warrior in the1970s and 1980s and played a key role in establishing the Greenpeace offices in France, Spain and Latin America. He has since spearheaded a number of Greenpeace’s international campaigns and acted as the organization’s Political Director until he left to co-found the Varda Group with fellow activist Kelly Rigg in 2003. The Group’s mission statement is “to provide strategic advice and campaign expertise and coordination services across a wide range of international environmental and social issues.”
Parmentier has served as an independent expert advisor to a number of governments—including the Spanish government under Pedro Sánchez—NGOs, private organizations, international bodies including the United Nations, policy institutes, and is frequently invited to share his knowledge at conferences and other events.
His special passion and area of expertise is the conservation of the world’s oceans and the fragile ecosystems that exist within them and was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Global Ocean Commission. We sat down with him to find out more about his past, his current projects, and his take on both the myriad facets of the global climate crisis as well as its specific impact on cities like Barcelona.
Metropolitan: You’ve dedicated your life to protecting the oceans and the ecosystems that exist within it. How did your involvement with environmental activist groups, such as Friends of the Earth, begin?
Rémi Parmentier: Yes, I’ve been involved in activism my entire adult life. I was not quite as young as Greta Thunberg (the young Swedish climate activist) when I started, but almost. And here I am today, approaching my 65th birthday.
It all started for me in April 1974 when I joined the campaign of a French agronomist by the name of René Dumont. I watched him raise a glass of water on television, warning that just a few decades later humans would quite probably go to war over fresh water, just as we have for petroleum.
His campaign headquarters were on a boat moored along the Seine River in Paris, not far from my home. I visited him on a Sunday afternoon, and that was the beginning for me. Since then I have never stopped being an environmental activist. At the time there weren’t many of us, so even for a very young man it wasn’t difficult to find a niche as long as one was willing to climb a steep learning curve.
Where did your passion specifically for the ocean begin?
A couple of years later at a planning meeting at the Friends of the Earth Headquarters in Paris, a man named Nicolas Desplats—who’d been running a whale conservation campaign called Project Jonah—said he was no longer available to continue the project and asked if someone was interested in taking over from him.
I raised my hand, but I didn’t realize what I was getting into. As I explained in a book I published in France a couple of years ago, I thought the task was that of a behind-the-scenes liaison between the two organizations, when in fact this person turned over the keys to Project Jonah—both physically and figuratively—after one three-hour-long debrief. (Part of the debrief included the detail that there was a group of hippy-like draft dodgers in Vancouver, Canada, mounting an expedition to “save the whales.” This was in the middle of the Vietnam War.)
You were one of the founding members of Greenpeace International, as well as one of the original crew aboard the Rainbow Warrior. This ship became a recognizable symbol of protest around the globe and incurred the wrath of more than one government—including the French government, which infamously sank the ship in retaliation for its protests against French nuclear testing. What was your time like as a member of the crew? And what role does the new Rainbow Warrior, commissioned in 2011, play in climate activism?
Those were extraordinary times. We invented and refined new ways to reclaim the future, to reclaim life. We were calling what we did “non-violent direct action,” but with the passing of the time, I prefer to describe our work as protest performances.
The Rainbow Warrior that we bought in 1977 was an old rusty research trawler destined for the wrecker—it had little to do with the contemporary, purpose-built Rainbow Warrior 3 of today. I did visit the Rainbow Warrior 3 two and a half years ago in Amsterdam, for the funeral of my old former Greenpeace colleague Steve Sawyer. I remember thinking that the ship’s bridge looked more like the cockpit of a Boeing 747 than “my” old Rainbow Warrior.
As Greenpeace’s Political Director, you were involved in campaigns on a global scale. What were some of the initiatives that you are most proud of during your time at Greenpeace?
Personally, I think the campaign that led to the permanent, worldwide prohibition of the dumping of radioactive and industrial wastes into the sea in 1993 is the one I am the most proud of. I played a key role in the campaign’s creation, and then ran it for 15 years, until the dumping ban was finally adopted.
It not only confronted the problem of dumping at sea but also, but our work within the UN International Maritime Organization also allowed us to develop political campaigning skills that were pretty much unheard of at the time. We ultimately completely took over the parties to the London Convention, converting it from what was essentially a “dumpers’ club” to a pollution prevention body. That was exciting—the “dumpers” didn’t see it coming.
I can also claim some credit for the worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling, the Comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Treaty, and the Madrid Protocol for the protection of the Antarctic continent, to name just a few other initiatives.
But in spite of all that we achieved, I’m also happy to report that there is life after Greenpeace. I left my position in the organization nearly twenty years ago, and I’ve continued to work on projects that have continued to make a difference in the world. Through the Varda Group—the consultancy my former Greenpeace colleague Kelly Rigg and I have been running since 2003—we’re still running or supporting projects of all kinds, from the Global Ocean Commission to the International Renewable Energy Agency. We even supported the World Health Organization Convention in its efforts on Tobacco Control, and the city of Barcelona in its Blue Economy hub project.
When you drive fast, it’s important to look into the rear-view mirror to see where you’ve been, but always with an eye on the windshield to see the road ahead, too.
How has your work brought you into conflict with some of the major shipping companies?
Yes, of course—but I propose that we look to the windshield here. To quote John Kerry, President Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate Change: “I want to announce that in support of the global effort to keep us in reach of [the pre-industrial climate change bar of] 1.5 degrees Celsius and in support of global efforts to achieve net zero [carbon emissions] by no later than 2050, the United States is committing to work with countries in the International Maritime Organization to adopt the goal of achieving zero emissions from international shipping by 2050.”
I know the International Maritime Organization (IMO)—the specialized UN agency that regulates shipping worldwide—very well, and there is plenty of work ahead if we want to fulfill the ambitious but necessary objective John Kerry is describing here. This includes addressing the IMO’s funding mechanism, which is based on the size of each country’s merchant fleet and therefore makes it largely dependent on the oil and gas supertanker industry.
How has online shopping during the pandemic and the resulting increase in shipping volume impacted the marine environment?
Shipping is a business, which makes it not only an environmental issue, but a social one as well. From whales being hit by ever-larger, ever-faster vessels that are under pressure to travel as quickly as possible from point A to point Z—maybe I should say from point S for Shanghai to point R for Rotterdam, or any other major consumer market—to underpaid crews from developing countries, to attempts to circumvent social and environmental regulations and liabilities for profit, to dirty fuel, it all impacts the world we live in.
What about the tourism industry? Cruise ships, for example, are a big part of Barcelona’s tourism. Is there a way to make tourism more sustainable without hurting the economies of cities or countries that depend on that industry for a large part of its income?
In a recent article published in the newspaper La Vanguardia, I proposed a protocol that would add the creation of a sustainable Blue Economy and “blue” tourism to the Barcelona Convention—a UN treaty for the protection of the Mediterranean. This treaty is nearly 50 years old, and in my opinion needs to be adapted to contemporary realities.
Could you tell us more about your work in Barcelona specifically?
I was asked to join an Advisory Group when the city decided to set up the Barcelona ReACT conference in response to the economic hardship due to COVID-19. At the time I helped to organize and facilitate a roundtable debate on the Blue Economy, and this collaboration continues to this day. It is interesting to me that Barcelona has identified the Blue Economy as an axis of its post-COVID, recovery plan, because in my experience there can be no green [in a city or a country] without sustainable blue.
The Varda Group is an international organization with the mission statement of creating maximum change for the benefit of people and the planet via collaborations with freelancers, NGOs, governments, businesses, and intergovernmental organizations. You campaign and consult on all kinds of issues, from oceans and climate change and issues of human dignity. Why did you decide to leave Greenpeace to co-found the Group, and what are some of the most critical campaigns you’re working on now?
It was nearly 20 years ago, just after the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10), where we had successfully executed a political campaign for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It was just the right time to start sharing our experience with other organizations and other projects working towards the same goals.
Next year will be Rio+30, as well as the 50th anniversary of the first UN conference on the environment held in Stockholm in 1972. The plans to mark these milestones stalled due to the pandemic, but I hope it will still be an opportunity to reflect on the successes as well as the failures of the past, and share all that we’ve learned with the new generations who are now on the front lines.
How are global poverty, government subsidies, freedom of information and sustainability all interconnected?
I’d put freedom of information as priority number one, because it’s essential to guarantee transparency when it comes to the use of subsidies and other public funds, as well as to combat corruption. This in turn is essential to the fight against poverty, as well as the three legs of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental equity.
Take the 17 Sustainable Development Goals—also known as the UN 2030 Agenda—adopted in 2015 by the UN General Assembly. The goals are interconnected—they come as a package and must be treated as such. Individual governments have priorities that are determined by their respective circumstances, but they must also respect each other’s priorities, otherwise the entire package will fail.
What role does the issue of inter-generational equity play in the goals of your work, and why is it important?
If I belonged to Greta Thunberg’s generation I’d be as pissed off as she is, or maybe more so. Or maybe I am just as angry, as I was a member of the youth group around the time of the first UN conference on the environment in 1972. Ironically, Greta’s hometown is Stockholm, the exact same city where the conference took place in 1972.
The fishing industry has long received criticism for overfishing. How do you promote local fishing through your “save the sea” startups?
The large industrial fishing fleets swallow approximately 80% to 90% of government subsidies and a comparable proportion of the resources worldwide, yet small-scale artisanal fishers provide 90% of the employment in the sector. It is therefore essential to make sure that small-scale artisanal fishers have sufficient access to resources and markets.
Negotiations aimed at eliminating subsidies that lead to overfishing have been going on within the World Trade Organization for the last twenty years, but in the meantime as the talks continue, global fish populations continue to shrink.
In March of 2021, the EU Parliament voted for new standards for monitoring fishing catches that seem contradictory. On one hand, digital monitoring standards for commercial fishing were tightened; on the other, accurate reporting of catches was relaxed. What is one thing you wish governments, whether in Europe or in the world in general, would do with respect to policy?
Governments have agreed in principle time and time again that the fisheries subsidies which contribute to overfishing and overcapacity must be eliminated. They said it yet again in the outline for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These harmful subsidies have an estimated annual value of around $20 billion (USD) worldwide. This is money that government could put to much better use; for example, in scientific research, monitoring and control of fishing fleets, marine protected areas management and so on.
What about private companies and individuals? What can they do to contribute?
Private companies must walk the walk, not only talk the talk—sometimes I say they need to swim the talk. They must not hide behind their customers, passing the blame onto individual consumers who often do not have a choice in order to avoid taking responsibility.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a minute and ask a question that is intentionally short-sighted. Trying to save the planet is great as a concept, but why should the average person who is just trying to pay the bills from month-to-month care about the state of the oceans? If tourism, commercial fishing and shipping helps their local or national economy, is less biodiversity in the ocean really such a high price to pay?
Whether we’re talking climate change, habitat destruction or loss of biodiversity, the first victims are always the “little guys.” The most vulnerable are the smaller and poorer countries, the small-scale companies and low-income individuals and families.
It is important to continue to talk at international conferences and climate summits because sustainable development is about the tension between environmental, social and economic welfare and values on a global scale. But at the end of the day, we must walk the walk in order to achieve real change and ensure a future for us all.
What’s on the horizon for you in 2021, 2022 and beyond?
Some are still talking about 2021 as a “super year for the ocean,” with expectations of milestones to come in the second half of the year—for example, international agreements to protect 30% of the ocean, protecting large parts of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, or finalizing UN negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of the high seas with an eye on marine biodiversity. 64% of the global ocean (45% of the planet, that is!) lies beyond the 200-mile limits under countries’ national jurisdiction, and as a result their exploitation is poorly regulated (or not regulated at all), and changes need to be made.
But even if concrete promises are made this year, there will be a long road to implementing them, in 2022 and way beyond.