Portugal donates to the UN a piece by Vanessa Barragão

Portugal will donate the Coral Vivo [Living Coral] tapestry by Portuguese textile artist Vanessa Barragão to the United Nations Organization (UNO) to be permanently exhibited in its headquarters.

With this donation, the Government wishes to enhance Portugal’s active participation in the Organisation, as well as the UN’s central role in the Ocean Agenda and building a greener future, that is safer and more prosperous. At the same time, it underlines the acknowledgement of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s role in fighting climate change.

Vanessa Barragão’s Coral Vivo celebrates the importance and wealth of coral reefs, an ecosystem with the world’s greatest biodiversity, one that is extremely threatened. Up to 2050, 90% of the corals are at risk of disappearing.

Creating large-scale works that recreate these ecosystems, the textile artist and designer from the Algarve region of Portugal shares powerful messages calling for environmental awareness, alerting to the threat these marine areas a facing due to climate change and pollution, concerns in line with the UN 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goal 14.

This gift is in the year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

Portugal – a country that has applied to non-permanent member of the UN Security Council 2027/28 – has carried out significant action on the international level around the need to protect the oceans and adopting a Sustainable Blue Economy, having hosted in Lisbon in 2022 the Second UN Ocean Conference.

Prime Minister António Costa attended the ceremony to donate the tapestry on Monday 18 March at the UN HQ in New York.

Watch the English version of the video here.