Blood-Red Arctic Rivers Are Nature’s Urgent Warning: We Need MAPS Now

Blood-red waters, locust swarms, global disease and cataclysmic storms: how many more plagues will we suffer before we learn to respect our shared home? When a single cough brings our world to a halt, and as President Putin struggles with a state of emergency after a massive diesel spill into Russia’s Arctic river system, it’s time to acknowledge that thawing permafrost is everyone’s business.

We can no longer deny our interconnection or the importance of protecting our planetary life support and global temperature regulator: the Arctic Ocean. For the sake of all life for generations to come, all ocean waters above the Arctic Circle must be immediately declared a Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS).

By compelling an exodus of all present and future exploitation from the Arctic Ocean, MAPS helps keep our global climate system in balance, stabilizing the ice and permafrost we rely on. In so doing, MAPS not only safeguards our homes, food and water supplies, economic balance, social stability world peace, and immunity from future pandemics. It honours our interdependence with all aspects of life on the planet. MAPS is like a mark over the door of our world to protect our children and all generations to come.

Just as the Arctic Ocean is downstream from the Ambarnaya river where the spill took place, we are all downstream from the Arctic Ocean – and at the same time, we are all upstream from the spill. What happens in one part of the globe affects the whole and we each have a part to play. Much of the year-round ice that cools our planet has vanished due to human activity in the Arctic region and around the world. The Arctic Ocean has lost 95% of its oldest and thickest ice. Parts of its waters are now 7°C above the long-term average. As temperatures rise, permafrost melts, both in the seabed and on land. MAPS protects the remaining sea ice so it can continue to keep the Arctic region and our world cool. This mitigates the extent of melting permafrost and the possibility of future spills. In addition, MAPS keeps an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil buried in the seabed, catalyzing the global shift off fossil fuels to renewable energies.

“With increased natural disasters, diseases and spills, Nature has been sending us increasing warning signs for years to change our ways. Now, it is clear that it is actively pushing back,” says the Canadian musician, author and educator Parvati, founder and CEO of the international Parvati Foundation. “With 10,000 people dying each day due to fossil fuel pollution, 200 species disappearing from the Earth forever each day, and 14,000 tons of Arctic ice melting every second, we are out of time. We must commit immediately to our collective survival by honouring our interconnection and realizing the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary.”

Parvati Foundation is an all-volunteer international charity that supports a healthy world by helping people remember our inherent interconnection. Its team includes world leaders, renowned humanitarians, scientific luminaries, environmental heroes, media moguls, and compassionate citizens from around the world. Parvati Foundation is leading the realization of MAPS through the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary Treaty that updates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Two countries have already signed the MAPS Treaty. With the signatures of 99 world leaders of UN member states, the entire Arctic Ocean above the Arctic Circle will be protected forever from exploitation. Securing the Treaty signatures at the necessary speed is supported by an international petition, country-specific petitions, as well as GEM: Global Education for MAPS, which harnesses the power of modern media with music, words and visuals to awaken interconnection and generate the international momentum of an unstoppable call from citizens and world leaders alike