World Ocean Radio - Ocean Policy and Governance

This week on World Ocean Radio are two forward-looking government-proposed initiatives that offer opportunities for progress in climate policy, investment, resiliency and sustainability. The first is Bridgetown 2.0, proposed by the Prime Minister of Barbados, to urge UN member states to consider an ambitious finance-driven program of climate-change response and implementation; the second is an ambitious climate commitment by the State of California to reach 100% carbon-free by 2045, as part of their proven commitment to environmental protection and action.
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 on World Ocean Radio we're discussing a topic close to our home waters in Maine: the complex dispute between the lobster fishery and environmentalists over gear modification and the entanglement of migrating right whales. And we highlight the Maine Coast Fisherman's Association who recently addressed the US House of Representatives to discuss amendment to the Farm Bill that would extend those bill's advantages and opportunities to fisheries and marine coastal development.
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 on World Ocean Radio as part of the multi-part RESCUE series we revisit the concept of ecosystem services accounting and propose that, in order to create a culture of investment for our future, we must apply energy, imagination and innovation to enable transition and success. 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 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.