World Ocean Radio - Advocacy
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a conversation about consensus, a policy-making tool that has historically served to progress issues forward. In this episode we argue that, in light of recent conversations and outcomes from COP27 and Davos, consensus may have become diluted, compromised and corrupted. What's next? Might it be time for bottom-up collective action and social invention? RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week marks the 600th episode of World Ocean Radio. It was in 2009 that the show first began with encouragement from WERU-FM Community Radio in Blue Hill, Maine. Today World Ocean Radio is heard via countless college and community radio stations around the United States and in select regions in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Africa. Thanks to the rise in social media these last number of years we are now broadcast worldwide, reaching millions of listeners connected by the sea. In this week's special anniversary edition we look back to the state of the ocean when this show first began, where we are now, and where we could be headed if we so choose to employ the many tools at our disposal to sustain our water planet.
The climate is in crisis, and the next generation is committed to and has been successful in raising awareness, demanding political action, seeking legal recourse for offenders, and developing inventive responses to the problems we face. This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss the many ways that climate change is becoming part of the larger conversation around the world, entering into educational systems and curriculum, and calling young people to activism and demand for change around the globe.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity's annual demands on Nature exceed the capacity for Earth's ecosystems to regenerate those resources within that year. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the red alert that is this overshoot day, 2019, showing that we are living beyond nature's means to sustain our growing demands.
With the Hearts in the Ice expedition set to begin one month from now, World Ocean Radio is revisiting a special episode dedicated to the upcoming 270-day exploration of the Arctic at the Bamsebu trapper’s cabin in the high north. Hearts in the Ice is a citizen science initiative that Sunniva Sorby and Hilde Falun Strom will undertake next month as a means to create a global dialogue around changes in the Polar regions that impact us all.
There has never been a better time to be a citizen scientist--those individuals interested in the collection of data toward solutions, the expansion of public awareness, to satisfy curiosity, and to help develop concrete actions for the protection of the ocean. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we provide a number of examples of ocean science initiatives for the curious at heart, whether your interest is penguins, birds, clouds, phytoplankton or any other feature of the ocean world.
This week on World Ocean Radio we introduce listeners to two women who are planning to embark on an unsupported exploration in the Arctic: 270 days at the Bamsebu trapper’s cabin in the high north. Hearts in the Ice is a citizen science initiative that Sunniva Sorby and Hilde Falun Strom will undertake in August 2019 as a means to create a global dialogue around changes in the Polar regions that impact us all. We invite you to join the conversation at heartsintheice.com.
On June 9th, 2018, a March For The Ocean (M4O) will take place in Washington, D.C. and in cities around the world. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we encourage listeners to gather in the nation's capital, to find a march in a city nearby, to organize, and to volunteer. We argue that we must declare, loudly and publicly, that the ocean will prevail and will continue to support us for generations to come if only we have the courage and the will to sustain it.
On April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day, an annual day set aside to honor the environmental movement of the 70s to demand action for the health of our planet. World Ocean Radio decided to postpone talking about Earth Day this year in the hope that we might remind listeners that we must celebrate, speak out and stand up for the environment every day.
After more than 430 episodes of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill takes this week to outline what the World Ocean Observatory does, and the ways in which we reach people around the globe through various programs, social networks, and our vast website of educational resources.
As a follow up to a World Ocean Radio episode from mid-May, we offer an overview of the Ocean Conference in New York last week which sought to reach outcomes toward sustainable development goal (SDG) 14: to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. And in this episode we encourage all listeners to become agents for change by choosing one ocean issue and investing talent and action toward a solution.
On June 8th we celebrate World Ocean Day, a day to recognize our relationship with the ocean through global connection and stewardship. In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill discusses what World Ocean Day is meant to do and will ask, "What does it take for the will of the people to coalesce around a single issue, to be informed and changed into a voice for change?"
In September of 2016, World Ocean Observatory began a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution's Ocean Portal to promote the Earth Optimism Summit in Washington, D.C. during Earth Day weekend in April. For the past six months we have searched for and reported on examples of ocean optimism and innovative projects around the globe. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, our final episode in the Earth Optimism Series, host Peter Neill hails the work of the Smithsonian Institution and the Ocean Portal in their preparation for this global event, and outlines the mission of the summit as well as the need for optimism and why it should be celebrated.
This week we continue the Earth Optimism Series, a 24-episode project in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's Ocean Portal, to celebrate ocean solutions and innovative projects in the context of the Earth Optimism Summit, April 2017. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the history of the recycling movement and the modern day efforts of local groups such as ecomaine, a waste-to-energy and single-sort recycling facility in Southern Maine. And we offer suggestions for what we can do as consumers and citizens to mitigate waste from the trash cycle, and to keep plastics out of landfills and the ocean.
With this edition of World Ocean Radio we embark on an informal partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s Ocean Portal to address ocean solutions and innovative projects in the context of the Global Earth Optimism Summit to be held Earth Day Weekend in April 2017. The Smithsonian will convene thought leaders, scientists, philanthropists, the media and more to discuss and share solutions. In this episode we introduce the ideas behind the Earth Optimism Summit and the subsequent series of radio broadcasts profiling exemplary people and projects, new visions, new ideas, inventions, and new behaviors that are transforming our relationship with the natural world.
In September the World Ocean Observatory was invited to attend the Our Ocean Conference hosted by the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. During the 2-day gathering more than 4 million square km (1.5 million sq. miles) of ocean were newly pledged to protection and sustainability, and more than 1 billion dollars were pledged to ocean protection, research, and the blue economy. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we offer a report of the various pledges, commitments, and advancements made during Our Ocean 2016.
The world is connected, not divided, by the sea, through the circulation of protein, goods, people, and ideas. The ocean contains an enormous unexplored inventory of medicinal cures, unlimited energy, and desalinated drinking water. How do we build a new global constituency for the ocean? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will explore this idea and ask how we might connect and unite as citizens of the ocean worldwide, and to sustainably benefit from the ocean's bounty.
On June 8th we celebrate World Ocean Day, a day to recognize our relationship with the ocean through global connection and stewardship. In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill will discuss what World Ocean Day is meant to do and will ask, "What does it take for the will of the people to coalesce around a single issue, to be informed and changed into a voice for change?"
The US Navy's SEALAB initiative is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, with now three pioneering aquatic living experiments under their belts to help understand how humans can best survive in underwater conditions. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill salutes the work of SEALAB, outlining their enormous contributions to the development of tools such as breathing devices and medical protections, as well as their contributions to the further understanding of the physical and psychological demands of surviving in an underwater habitat.
Oysters have had a history of ebb and flow, plenty and scarcity, and in New York Harbor there was a time when the waters were so polluted that oyster populations diminished and interest in consumption vanished. Enter the Harbor School, an innovative high school on Governor’s Island on the East River in New York City. They have launched a project to revive the defunct oyster populations through an ambitious goal of restoring no less than one billion oysters to the harbor. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the school’s history and their restorative ecosystem service activities and their effort to reconnect the harbor to the 30 million people living within its vast urban watershed.
A recent series of investigative stories entitled "The Outlaw Ocean" by Ian Urbina of the New York Times exposes the dark side of the deep sea, describing real abuses, crime and violence in international waters. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill summarizes the four-part “Outlaw Ocean” series, praising Urbina’s work to educate the public by exposing the labor, human rights, and environmental abuses occurring out of sight, on the high seas.
Who has a right to life? Only one species? Do humans have the right to exterminate any species they wish? In an effort to combat climate change and the exploitation of the planet’s resources, Bolivia is becoming the first country on Earth to give comprehensive legal rights to Mother Nature. In 2010 the National Congress of Bolivia voted to support an act to protect the well-being of its citizens by protecting the natural world, its resources, sustainability, and value as essential to the common good. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill explores the language contained in the legislation and asserts that Bolivia may be inventing a social model that will show how we as a global community might transcend conflict and division toward a harmonious and sustainable future.
On September 21st, 2014, nearly 400,000 people gathered to march through the streets of New York City to express growing concern over the impacts of climate change. World Ocean Observatory's Peter Neill was there, and in this episode of World Ocean Radio he shares the exhilaration and exuberance of the march and discusses the UN Climate Summit and General Assembly which took place in the days following the People's Climate March.
Mailboxes fill each day with messages from advocacy organizations with petitions promoting a variety of important causes and ideas. Certain campaigns are hugely successful thanks to the power of social media and the speed with which information travels around the globe. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the evolution of the petition concept and outline some of the most successful international campaigns that have and are making a global difference for climate and the ocean.
