Leaders with Lacqua Goes Green: Fabien Cousteau

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When you grow up on the decks of the Calypso, ocean advocacy is in your DNA. According to his website, Fabien Cousteau knows how powerful a personal connection to the ocean can be and that’s why he’s committed to providing communities with the ocean first-hand. Whether it’s releasing baby sea turtles or taking a dive in a shark-shaped submarine, adventures with Fabien inspire a life-long passion for protecting the ocean.

“Young people are crucial to the health of our ocean. Just as my grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau inspired a generation of ocean advocates, it’s now time to pass that excitement for our ocean to the next generation.”

Leveraging the opportunities of today to make this planet a better place

Fabien Cousteau used his studies in environmental economics as a tool to explore the undersea realm. ‘And it's the place that he feels most at home, it's the place that he feels most curious about and one that in many ways, he feels the biggest sense of responsibility and urgency towards.’ – what he told Francine Lacqua during her recent Leaders with Lacqua Goes Green interview with him.

What the interview revealed is the sense of urgency and a sense of alarm about the fragility of the ocean word. It’s generally recognized that the surface of the ocean covers 70 percent of the planet – supplying us with food, jobs, and oxygen - yet most people don’t realize only 3 percent of it is protected.

Life on earth including our own survival actually depends on a healthy, vibrant ocean

The frustration that emerges for a third generations ocean explorer centers around society’s general lack of awareness. Raising awareness is a shared plight as other environmentalists such as Sebastião Salgado and Jane Goodall have voiced during recent events such as Zurich Talks, a digital event series produced by Zurich Insurance Group. Now more than ever, we need to intensify awareness about how integral forests and oceans are to not only our wellbeing, but to our existence – they are both crucial parts of our life support system. In the ocean’s case, its beauty and fragility are often taken for granted, in part due to its mystery and no knowing enough about it to protect it.

In the Leaders with Lacqua interview, Cousteau emphasizes the need to learn more about the ocean, about ourselves and our interconnectivity with it. He maintains that we've explored only five, six percent of our ocean world to date on any level. And although there are some exploits happening now encompassing 30 percent of the ocean floor, we don't yet know what's down there and moreover, we don't really know how it could affect our lives. He goes on to say, ‘But what we do know is that what happens to the ocean is happening to us and to our future viability as a species on this planet. So, we have to be much more conscious and much more connected with our ocean world.

Why is the ocean in such a decline?

Cousteau explains that climate change related issues cascade into acidification related issues. And acidification related issues affect anything with calcium carbonate structures like coral reefs, like shellfish, the things we love to eat. ‘It has to do with pollution, he says, ‘both the stuff that we see, plastics and the things that we don't see like runoff and fertilizers and chemicals and dumping aimlessly all over the place.’ There is a general sentiment about the over consumption of natural resources. Similar to the impact overlogging has on forests, is the impact and concern overfishing has on the ocean. Cousteau reminds that modern day fishing practices since the 1950s have resulted in losing nearly 60 percent of our world's wild fish stocks.

‘We are going environmentally bankrupt. And that's a real problem, a real consideration for our future.’

We must strive to do better every day

Notwithstanding grave concerns, Cousteau is also hopeful that intensifying awareness brings along the opportunity to innovate. Many would agree with Cousteau’s view that we have the technological innovations necessary, and that we have the intellectual capacity to implement the necessary steps to find new and different ocean preservation approaches. But to live more in symbiotic relationship with our life support system requires a strong and collective will. According to him, ‘that falls on the shoulders of not only us as consumers, as individuals, which are the ultimate vote takers, but also the businesses and governments that need to put regulations in place so that we do that. There will be some sacrifice, there'll be some changes, there'll be some benefits, but we have to be able to take those first steps.’ Cousteau believes that if the will of the people globally is strong, ‘human beings can create miracles if they put their minds to it.’ What’s most clear for him is we are losing them if we don't start now.

In the sixth episode of Leaders with Lacqua Goes Green, sponsored by Zurich, Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua sits down with Fabien Cousteau about his mission to save the seas. (Source: Bloomberg)
Watch the full video for more insights, which was first aired on November 10, 2022, on Bloomberg.com.

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