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
The ecosystem approach lays out a series of principles to guide management towards long-term sustainability of marine and coastal ecosystems. With this guide on Marine and Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM), UNEP seeks to assist countries and communities to take steps towards making marine and coastal ecosystem-based management operational – from strategic planning to on-site implementation. It has three main sections:
A littered beach in Indonesia. © GRID-Arendal | L. Hislop
Marine litter undoubtedly is one of the most pressing issues in marine conservation and management. It is a global problem that negatively impacts ecosystems and human beings alike. With more and more solid litter ending up in the oceans and extremely slow degradation rates of plastics, the amount of litter present in marine systems will grow enormously over the next years.
The recognition of their successful efforts is an important incentive for solution providers to share about their work. This fact was illustrated impressively by an event held in Venice recently. The event was hosted by the Italian superyacht shipyard VSY, together with Eulabor Institute, a sustainability science research organization. They have jointly developed the “Waterevolution” model, which has just been published as a “Blue Solution”.
Waterevolution aims to develop strategic, long-term partnerships between maritime cluster companies and marine conservation. © Marie Fischborn