[intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
Recently I received a draft of A Call for a New Ocean Commission, proposed by Mark Spaulding, President of The Ocean Foundation, a long-established community foundation that distributes funds and operates programs for ocean conservation in the United States and worldwide. The proposal follows a history of such initiatives: The Stratton Commission in 1969; The 1998 Year of the Ocean; the Pew Oceans Commission in 2003; The US Commission on Ocean Policy in 2004. All of these drove policy, research, programs, and other means to focus on the ocean as a national, and international, resource upon which we often unknowingly depend.
Spaulding calls for a new National Commission on the Regenerative Ocean charged to address, over two years, six outcomes paraphrased as follows:
first, an updated, authoritative State of the Ocean Report documenting current condition, trends, and trajectories for US waters and the global commons; second, a comprehensive analysis of ocean governance models worldwide, identifying advanced institutional innovations and policy frameworks; third, addressing emerging challenges not previously recognized; fourth, incorporation of new opportunities such as the High Seas Treaty, Global Plastics Treaty, and advances in marine spatial planning and blue carbon science; fifth, articulation of the institutions, laws, and governance structures needed to realize the vision of a “regenerative ocean that supports all life on earth” by improving global ocean health, building climate resilience, and fostering a sustainable blue economy; and sixth, rebuild frameworks for governance, pathways to restoration, and design systems superior to what has existed before, aligned to a bold new institutional vision.
The commission is to consider transformational reforms including the creation of a Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Science, at Cabinet level, to consolidate ocean science, stewardship, and management functions currently scattered across multiple agencies, to restore ocean health, depleted fish populations, recovered blue carbon habitats, carbon sequestration, heat absorption, climate regulation, and to provide unified leadership for America’s ocean future through eco-system management, vetting ocean commerce for regenerative quality, and coordinated finance and regulation.
The proposal calls for collaboration with civil society, to include scientists, conservation organizations, fishing communities, coastal stakeholders, and engaged citizens with deep expertise and institutional memory, drawing on such expertise to recommend mechanisms to ensure the ocean community’s long-term capacity to contribute to governance, science, and stewardship.
Finally, the proposal issues a call to action to the US Congress, executive, philanthropy and citizen engagement: to recognize the ocean’s provision of oxygen, food, climate regulation, economic prosperity, and global well-being, emphasizing the US responsibility as the world’s largest economic zone to assure a regenerative ocean future for the benefit of all mankind.
The global response to climate change, itself a function of a changing ocean, has not been successful – “too little, too late” is the words of the UN Secretary General. My fear has been that, in response, public and private organizations will double down on conventional structures and behaviors, seeking a future founded on the inadequate accomplishments of the past. What is the strategy to be pursued to recover? Is it more of the same, or will we apply revised values, fresh ideas, and innovative actions, to address not what we have done, but what we have NOT done, that might well transform both input and output into a different, more successful consequence.
The Ocean Foundation proposal suggests such an approach, though invention, through participation of a larger community of “citizens of the ocean,” from the United States and worldwide, to plan ocean regeneration through multi-disciplinary invention and expanded public engagement reflective of the ocean’s systemic value at home and abroad. My hope is that this call for action will find traction, and that such a commission will move forward as a process as regenerative for its participants as for the ocean itself.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
[outro music, ocean sounds]
