World Ocean Radio - Ocean Policy and Governance

We are aware of the key role played by insurance, more so as we face increasing events of extreme weather destruction. Government agencies are signaling policy and coverage shifts, and there is a growing realization that existing policies and programs are not adequate to the new realities. Insurance is fundamental yet largely invisible until it is not there, and may be the driving force toward necessary change for the future.

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a proposed solution to advance successful connection and communication within and with those who fund and communicate ocean programs and projects.

RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with the topic of seafood consumption. While more than 3 billion people worldwide rely on wild-caught and farmed seafood as a significant source of animal protein, unsustainable and illegally caught seafood harvest threatens a major health crisis if we do not confront the issue through regulation and enforcement of best practice, change in social behavior and consumption, and new technological innovations toward a sustainable future.

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a discussion of alternative energy solutions, battery technology, geothermal energy production, and the adaptation of existing at-sea platforms and rigs to capture energy from the ocean as a less-polluting, renewed, refit utility, taking an old technology and transforming it into a new solution for our energy future. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a continuation of UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In early March, the UN finalized a consensus agreement to work toward the conservation and protection of ocean resources and ecosystems. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a highlight of two policies--the Antarctic Treaty and the Hamilton Agreement for the Sargasso Sea--that are working to successfully engage parties and members and maintain oversight for ocean and ecosystem conservation. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.

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.

In this episode we provide three examples of initiatives, proposals and financial solutions that could change the shape of our climate future, including the Bridgetown Initiative by Mia Amor Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, whose radical plan lays out specific actions to reform the global financial architecture to respond to the critical impacts of climate. Each of the initiatives discussed were cautiously embraced by world leaders and the status quo. Is change possible? What will it take?

This week on World Ocean Radio we're discussing COP27, the annual Conference of the Parties, that took place this year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. What should we expect for outcomes of the conference? Empty pledges and resolutions unmet? Or will actionable, lasting national commitments be forthcoming and methane emissions at last curtailed? The truth will be in the details.

This week on World Ocean Radio we're offering two extremely important ocean examples where the opposition of sovereignty and commonality collide. This first is the UN Treaty for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the second is a treaty for the management of the high seas and seabed--the vast areas that make up the boundaries beyond national jurisdiction.

We continue our thematic overview of the ocean edge this week with a conversation centered around coastal and offshore zones and the politics that define them. The Political Edge is part 6 of a 7-part series dedicated to the ocean edge, exploring what takes place there, from the real to the symbolic.

This week on World Ocean Radio we provide our annual observations on the Arctic Circle Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. This year's report highlights not only a seemingly insurgent presence by the Chinese but also a diminished presence by the United States, whose typically consequential interest in the Arctic was lacking. Also noticeably absent from the conversation: a perceived decline of representation by the Arctic's indigenous peoples. We'll discuss these things and more in this week's episode.