The 32nd Pacem In Maribus conference was inaugurated yesterday at the Corinthia Palace Hotel in Attard to discuss the participation of women and youth in the conservation of the sea.

And, as President Eddie Fenech Adami said, the holding of a Pacem in Maribus conference once again in Malta was like celebrating a homecoming. For, as he explained, “this hotel was the very cradle in which Pacem in Maribus was placed at birth. The first third of the series was also held here.”

After that, Pacem in Maribus began to lead a nomadic existence. Mobility has advantages over stability; but he hoped that the present 32nd Pacem in Maribus would prove to be the beginning of a new series that would seek to combine the virtues of both stability and mobility by being held alternately in Malta and elsewhere.

Dr Fenech Adami added: “The theme of this convocation makes it almost inevitable to recall that the real founder of Pacem in Maribus was a woman. Elisabeth Mann Borgese was the person specifically responsible for developing the idea of the Common Heritage of Humankind in two directions: first, the concept was applicable not only to the seabed, but, even more so, to a range of resources stretching from Antarctica to the Human Genome; secondly she also argued that the application of the concept of the common heritage, not just to the seabed but to the whole of ocean space, as advocated by Arvid Pardo, carried with it a new cultural approach to the ocean.”

Arvid Pardo was Malta’s representative at the UN, and it was he who proposed to the UN the ground-breaking theme of the sea as a common heritage, which eventually led to the UN Law of the Sea.

Dr Fenech Adami concluded: “Our small Island State that once proposed the new Law of the Sea, and later, the consideration of a climate change to the General Assembly of the United Nations – the same Malta that has stimulated a new awareness in the European Union, of the importance of Europe’s Territorial Seas, Exclusive Economic Zones and coastal areas, sincerely welcomes the International Ocean Institute’s probing of the new issues that keep arising from both the depths and the surface of the ocean, and wishes you every success in your endeavours.”