World Ocean Radio - Ocean Policy and Governance
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 an outline of the four technological focus areas of the recently announced Ocean Climate Action Plan, the organizing connection of which is technology. Guiding the actions of the plan are a commitment to be responsible stewards of a healthy and sustainable ocean, to advance environmental justice and engage with all communities, and to coordinate action across governments.
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 discussion of Earth law, a framework built upon the idea that ecosystems have the right to exist and thrive, and that Nature should be able to defend those rights in court. Can we ratify a collective treaty toward the protection of Nature? 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 UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a major example of a far-reaching universal agreement that was drafted in 1982 and ratified in 1984. At the recent Davos gathering, a call to overhaul the UNCLOS instrument of ocean protection went largely unheeded. Who will be willing to step up and redress priorities to conserve and sustain the ocean? 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 by featuring some successful initiatives and ocean progress, with examples of policies related to Marine Protected Areas that are working and thriving. 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.
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a discussion about ocean policy and the myriad organizations and initiatives around the world developing guidelines that inform decisions, rules and laws for the ocean future. 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?
The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP 27) closed recently in Egypt. Reactions to outcomes of the climate change conference have been mixed, and the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, which should have provided a comprehensive outline for concrete action, read more as a description of aspiration and suggestion: a plan to plan to plan a plan. Should we have expected more?
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.
How do we govern the ocean? This week on World Ocean Radio we introduce a concept that advocates for a centralized Ministry for the Ocean, a voice at the highest level of government to champion for ocean policy and protection.
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.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part twenty-nine of the multi-part BLUEprint series. In this episode we discuss the March 2021 release by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs announcing a new statistical framework entitled the "System of Environmental/Economic Accounting" (SEEA EA) which would ensure that natural capital (the contributions of forests, oceans, and other ecosystems) are integrated into economic reporting. This move may reshape decision- and policy-making toward sustainable development: natural capital calculated as equal to financial capital, as a mandatory inclusion in the budgets and estimates for all new development projects and corporate initiatives.
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.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss The Earth Law Center, a New York-based environmental non-profit organization that is dedicated to the concept that Nature, as an ecosystem, deserves the same rights as humans to exist, thrive, evolve and be protected by law. We share the scope of their work and advocacy, their programs and values, and the communities that are served by their involvement in American and international environmental court cases, laws, briefs and resolutions.
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.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, part 2 of a two-part series on environmental law, host Peter Neill provides a series of examples of systems we have in place to protect nature and its resources. These protections extend from international treaties to intergovernmental agencies and NGOs working to enact and secure maritime policies, governance and legal rights; and from law centers to the United Nations working to set standards for marine protections and indigenous peoples rights, and for the conservation of Nature, ecosystems, and natural resources.
Laws protect us from abuse, they preserve the stasis of systems, and they maintain stability and sustainability. We live in a time when the vast majority of the world's wealth is derived from the exploitation of natural resources, and there are laws and legal responses to protect those resources from corruption. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill outlines a series of additional laws that are intended to protect Nature and its resources--water, fresh air, food, and all living organisms--from corrupt values, indifference, and the consequences of exploitation. And he reaffirms the importance of the Public Trust Doctrine which demands that all resources must be sustained for the benefit of ensuing generations. "Nature and the Rule of Law" is part one of a two-part series dedicated to environmental law.
World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill recently returned from the Economist World Ocean Summit in Cancún, Mexico where he gathered with 400 ocean leaders and decision makers to discuss ocean policy, strategies, research, exploration and innovation. In this 461st episode of World Ocean Radio he shares what was discussed at the summit but also what was left out: namely the global fresh water cycle and the ocean as a financial, political, social, and cultural system. And he shares a surprising discovery made while swimming in an underground limestone cave in the the Mayan ruins at Chitzenitsa.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part two of a multi-part series on the Arctic. In this episode, host Peter Neill examines the Finland chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2017-2019), outlines their statement of intent, speculates about why the Finland approach is so different from past agendas, and ways in which their innovative approach may make it possible for them to succeed for the Arctic.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part one of a multi-part series on the Arctic. In this episode, host Peter Neill examines governance, oversight, resources, and the conditions and challenges facing the Arctic. He describes the work of the Arctic Council, an eight-nation consortium with jurisdiction in the region, and outlines the processes and responsibilities of stewardship by those member nations.
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.
