Coastal resilience and pollution governance top agenda items for SEI’s experts at UN Ocean Conference

The world’s ocean is in serious decline, threatening its ability to absorb carbon dioxide, support biodiversity, and sustain the tiny marine organisms that produce about half of the Earth’s oxygen. The UN Ocean Conference seeks to address these challenges and support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14. The summit will result in a Nice Ocean Action Plan, which the organizers hope will be as pivotal for the ocean as the Paris Agreement was for climate action. 

SEI’s priorities and expertise 

SEI will contribute to both the UN Ocean Conference (9-13 June) and the preceding One Ocean Science Congress (3-6 June). The researchers on site are Karina Barquet, who leads the Water, Coasts and Ocean team at SEI Headquarters, and Charlotte Wagner, a senior ocean researcher at SEI US. Drawing on their own research, they will highlight: 

• Ocean governance and co-existence. Competition for ocean resources requires new and better forms of ocean governance, not least where deep-sea mining, geopolitical tensions and the expansion of built-up “seascapes” pose new challenges. SEI’s research sheds light on how competing sectors can co-exist and even co-create solutions. 

• Coastal resilience. Nearly 40% of the global population lives within 100 kilometres of a coastline. SEI researchers study how countries and communities can increase their resilience to growing climate-related risks, through risk modelling, protection of critical infrastructures, and investments in nature-based solutions. Healthy marine and coastal ecosystems offer vital protection against sea-level rise, storms and erosion whilst providing critical ecosystem services for a circular bio-based blue economy. 

• Sustainable blue economy. SEI research explores how the expanding blue economy, with new risks and opportunities, can be governed. New technologies, blue financing and different forms of co-existence between, for example, energy production and aquaculture show potential. 

• Pollution reduction. Charlotte Wagner will present a poster at the One Ocean Science Congress on the impact of agricultural runoff on small-scale fisheries, one of the many forms of pollution that affect the ocean. Another research area for SEI is source-to-sea governance to limit pollution from sources upstream, for example from agriculture and plastic waste, for the latter, negotiations resume this year for the Global Plastics Treaty. 
• The role of science and evidence-based policymaking. SEI is a leading expert on bridging science with policy and practice, experiences that we will share with the ocean community throughout the conference.