Events

Oceans and coasts are changing. We're listening to those changes. Complex challenges take a diverse community to hear, understand and act. Coastal Futures 2020 is an endorsed event by the UN Decade of Ocean Sciences.

Our oceans and coasts are diverse and interconnected. Collaboration is our strength, underlying and reinforcing our capacity to think, innovate, and invest in their long-term wellbeing. The 2020 Our Coastal Futures conference will bring together voices from researchers, practitioners, Indigenous peoples, activists, businesses, youth, and decision-makers. This vibrant conference will inspire new ideas to enable a transition towards respectful custodianship of our oceans and coasts.

This event is designed to foster a sense of trust and respect among all, emphasizing diversity, innovation, and connections. The program will include traditional formats and other expressions, to create a new narrative on the role of respectful ocean and coastal custodianship, based on trust, reciprocity, communication and collaboration.

Come join us at Our Coastal Futures 2020 conference from 19 – 22 October, plus three days of workshop and excursion opportunities (19, 23, 24 October 2020) on the Gold Coast, Australia. We’re still finalizing the agenda, but a fantastic line-up is already taking shape.

On June 8th, 2020, the world celebrates the oceans. And so we invite the world to meet Peniche. Here lies the future. From here will rise the next tide of innovation that will contribute with the solutions, and respond to the challenges we’re facing today. The oceans are the source for so much already, but there’s still so much to discover. Understanding it deeply and acting responsibly will enable us to answer some of the most pressing issues: climate, economy, health, society. Let’s build this blue future, together. Join us, from anywhere in the world, on June 8th, for the launch of Smart Ocean in our fully remote event at: www.smartoceanpeniche.com A full lineup with talks from some of the most prestigious international speakers, workshops, masterclasses and some great surprises.

A Side Event for the 30th Session of the IOC Assembly, this event aims to raise awareness among IOC Member States on the opportunities that Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) partnerships offer for helping countries to achieve SDG14 Targets and for supporting the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Jointly organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), and the IOC-UNESCO/GEF LME:LEARN and IW:LEARN Projects, this interactive side event will first, offer an introduction to the LME portfolio in the context of SDG14 (and other associated SDGs), highlighting such proven approaches that have succeeded in reversing large scale dead zones, moved global tuna stocks towards sustainability, reduced the impacts of shipping on the marine environment, and introduced integrated, ecosystem-based approaches to sustainable ocean and coastal management at both local and multi-country scales. It will explain the science of Large Marine Ecosystems and the types of science they can contribute to member states. The introduction will also celebrate the 35 years of science developed by LME projects and stakeholders.

The second, technical, segment of the session will focus on the SDG14 targets themselves, and how they can be achieved in the respective LME partnerships across the globe. The dialogue will feature representatives of IOC Member States in an interview-format, with questions about specific targets being posed by a moderator.

Finally, the session will close with an audience interaction and question/answer with LME project practitioners from various regions, countries and agencies. These discussants will include representatives from the Caribbean Sea, Canary Current, Benguela Current and Mediterranean Sea Large Marine Ecosystems. Each discussant will focus on the science their project has helped develop and how it might contribute to the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

GEF IW:LEARN delivered the keynote presentation at the side event entitled "Innovative approaches at the regional level and their contribution to sustainable fisheries and the conservation of marine ecosystems" on Monday, 18 November 2019 at the FAO International Symposium on Fisheries Sustainability which took place on 18-21 November 2019 in Rome.

The objective of this Symposium is to identify pathways to strengthen the science and policy interplay in fisheries production, management and trade, based on solid sustainability principles for improved global outcomes on the ground. Ultimately, the debates and conclusions of the symposium will prepare the way for the development of a new vision for the way we perceive and use capture fisheries, outlining how the sector can respond to the complex and rapidly changing challenges facing society, and support the planning process of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

A Regional Workshop on Data and Information Management was jointly organized by Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA) and the GEF Large Marine Ecosystem: LEARN project.
The Asian Regional Workshop on Data and Information Management serves as a regional echo -workshop to share the learning highlights from the LME:LEARN Data and Information Management: Working Group Meeting and Training that was held in Paris, France from 2 to 4 July 2019.

Data and information function as crucial components of the development, assessment and enforcement of management policies, strategies and interventions. Knowledge sharing and learning exchanges serve as useful platforms for data and information management sharing for the use of various stakeholders, the wider public and practitioners.

In order to guide and support the data and information sharing on Large Marine Ecosystems – LMEs (as well as associated integrated coastal management, marine protected areas and Marine Spatial Planning projects), for use by LME:LEARN stakeholders and the wider public, the LME:LEARN project supports the Data and Information Management Working Group (DIM WG). The DIM WG was established as an informal body to guide the process with a clear mandate to create learning exchanges on data and information management tools to be used by the LME community of practitioners. Several meetings of the DIM WG have taken place since the start of the LME:LEARN project.

The main objective of the workshop is to foster interagency collaboration in sharing data and information for use by new GEF 7 projects and other associated projects in the region. As these projects require landscape assessments or baseline data, knowledge sharing and information exchanges on data and tools used can guide and support data and information sharing on Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) as well as associated integrated coastal management (ICM) projects.

This workshop aims to:

Discuss common indicators for comparison of progress in implementation of SAPs between LMEs
Exchange best practices on DIM especially in data collection, knowledge repositories, results and analysis methodologies, assessments and processes to influence policies
Present state of the art tools, KM platforms and databases from GEF IW:LEARN and other tools being utilised at the regional level, such as PEMSEA's State of the Coast reporting and thier Integrated Information Management Systems (IIMS)