written by Jan Kleine Büning , Blue Solutions
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is spreading across the globe as a new way of achieving sustainable development of the world’s seas and oceans.
But what does MSP actually mean? How does it work?
© GIZ
written by Ronja Schmidt, Blue Solutions
2017 is hoped to be a game changer for the ocean. For the first time, the United Nations will hold a conference, co-hosted by the governments of Fiji and Sweden, dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
The Blue Solutions Initiative is looking forward to contributing to this important Event. Join us on Twitter and Facebook and follow the conference.
Written by Carolin Hoffmann, Blue Solutions
123 marine and coastal solutions are currently available on the PANORAMA – solutions for a healthy planet platform.
123! This is equal to 123 successful efforts in the marine realm in different countries all around the world, readily available to inspire marine practitioners and communities who might face similar challenges right now in their work and in their daily lives.
This is where the Blue Solutions Initiative steps in, aiming to promote the exchange and dissemination of knowledge that is already out there. But what exactly is our approach?
written by Carolin Hoffmann, Blue Solutions
It is our mission to foster capacity development in the field of coastal and marine management. For that reason, we have just spent 9 days with a diverse group of marine professionals who underwent an intense training program on various elements and skills that constitute a blue trainer. There is one thing we are sure of – what happened in Bali will not stay in Bali!
It’s all about solutions! Rare, as well as Blue Solutions, are looking for approaches that work, thus, it is only natural to partner in the ambition to promote practicioners and their success stories. Rare’s Solution Search is built on innovation and competition theory. What is already working must be surfaced and spotlighted so that practitioners around the world can expand their impact as they replicate proven successes. A contest searching for solutions is designed to do just that.
Imagine you work in a project on protected area management and want to share your results from 3.5 years of activities towards collaborative management strategies. Mirjam de Koning, GIZ Laos, was in exactly this situation. In the Hin Nam No National Protected Area, located at the Lao-Vietnamese border, GIZ supports a project working on multi-level collaborative governance of this protected area to ensure its effective and equitable management. To capture project results and communicate lessons learned, Mirjam used the solution-ing approach to support an upscaling of the successes made in Laos.
The participatory governance assessment across several administrative levels is one of the identified building blocks for the management of the Hin Nam No National Protected Area.© Mirjam de Koning
Living on the coasts of the tropical countries of our planet would be very different without coral reefs. They provide the foundation for fisheries, for tourism, for coastlines that are stable, and thereby the basis for coastal communities’ livelihoods and sometimes national economies.
This was the starting point for the IUCN World Conservation Congress event “Blue Economy: Coral Reefs Matter” on the 4th September, 2016 in the Ocean Pavilion. The event brought together a range of projects, studies and initiatives that highlighted the various facets of why coral reefs are critical to the Blue Economy.
The second meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) was held in Nairobi, Kenya on 23-27th May 2016. With 2400 participants from 174 countries, representing governments, civil society, science and the private sector, UNEA-2 convened for an ambitious agenda under the theme “Delivering on the 2030 Agenda”.
The Assembly, which is a key platform for global environmental policy, decided upon 25 new resolutions, three of which are marine focused: oceans and seas (L.11/Rev.1), marine plastic litter and micro-plastic (L.12/Rev.1) and sustainable coral reef management (L.13/Rev.1).
On 12-13 May, the 3rd Potsdam Ocean Governance Workshop was held at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. The event gathered over fifty international ocean experts and representatives from governments, international organisations, research institutes and civil society organisations to think creatively about the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and ocean governance. Discussions focussed particularly on innovative approaches to the implementation of SDG 14 and the importance of healthy oceans to work towards all SDG. Participants also voiced their preference to refer to this SDG as “Life in Harmony with Water” rather than “Life Below Water” to better include the human dimension.
Blue Solutions was represented at the workshop by the implementing partners GIZ, GRID-Arendal and UNEP, and it was suggested to arrange for an exchange around ocean governance solutions at the upcoming UN Conference to Support the Implementation of SDG 14 in New York, 5-9 June 2017.
Blue Solutions is pleased to announce its new partnership with Mission Blue, founded by Sylvia Earle and the Sylvia Earle Alliance (S.E.A). The Mission Blue initiative aims to “ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas”, with the vision of 20% protection of the ocean by the year of 2020. With this in mind, the initiative is building a large Mission Blue community of organisations, initiatives, campaigns and researchers that promote and protect our blue planet. Currently, the Mission Blue network unites over 150 organisations and the number is continuously growing. Continue reading