- Barcelona International Convention Centre, Barcelona, Spain
- 10 - 12 April 2024
The tagline of the Ocean Decade is “The science we need for the ocean we want” and its mission, is to produce transformative ocean science solutions for sustainable development, connecting people and our ocean.
Launched in January 2021, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), the ‘Ocean Decade’, provides a convening framework for a wide range of stakeholders across the world to engage and collaborate outside their traditional communities to trigger nothing less than a revolution in ocean science. The Ocean Decade is now the largest global ocean science initiative ever undertaken with the ambition to deliver “the science we need for the ocean we want”.
The Ocean Decade conference, held at the CCIB in Barcelona, brought together the global Ocean Decade community and its partners to celebrate and share the achievements of the Ocean Decade community over the past three years. Stakeholders from academia, non-government organisations, governments, and the private sector gathered to set a collective vision for the remainder of the Decade. Hosted by Spain and co-organized with UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC/UNESCO) in its role as the coordinating agency of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), the Conference gathered over 1,500 in-person attendees from around 124 countries and thousands of virtual participants.
This conference acted as a milestone in which the global community were able to reflect on our progress to date and look to the future to set new goals and aspirations for achieving a healthy and sustainable ocean future. During the conference, a set of 10 white papers were published, each of which addresses one of the ten major challenges that the Ocean Decade community aim to tackle. These white papers identify future priorities for the Ocean Decade and will help charter a course towards delivering the science we need for the ocean we want.
Four years into the Ocean Decade, the conference was the first large scale event held as part of the Ocean Decade and brought together the global Ocean Decade community and created a large-scale platform for representatives from the scientific community, governments, NGOs and civil society, philanthropy, industry, and United Nations entities, to engage all voices in the conversation surrounding ocean protection and conservation.
We launched the recently endorsed Nutrient Pollution – Global Action Network (NP-GAN) programme to build relationships with multiple partners across this rapidly growing global marine science initiative.
Nutrient Pollution – Global Action Network (NP-GAN)
NP-GAN aims to catalyse action to address nutrient and wastewater pollution impacts on ocean ecosystems and human health focusing on agrochemical run-off of fertilizers and sewage/domestic wastewater. Leading a UN Decade Programme allows us to brigade our existing projects and programmes, and to shape international collaboration in support management of the global ocean that fosters resilient nature and healthy and prosperous societies.
NP-GAN held its first event at the conference bringing together the founding partners, (Cefas, Wildlife Conservation Society, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Commonwealth Sec, Cartagena convention and Fisheries and Ocean Canada). We presented our plans for the program, hearing about all the work carried out by the partners, and discussed how we can build up global collaborative networks to map, monitor and work towards strategies for the reduction of nutrient pollution.
Active engagement of diverse stakeholders, including Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOPs) is at the heart of the Ocean Decade and at our side event, NP-GAN set out its intentions to integrate ECOPs into the development of the programme. Throughout the week, we participated in a number of ECOP Programme led events, to begin to understand how we could work with this network to ensure NP-GAN in designed in an inclusive and sustainable way.
UK NDC
The UK established a National Decade Committee (NDC) to facilitate UK engagement with the UN Ocean Decade. Cefas (Su Painting and David Hughes) provide support to the UK NDC and it has already supported a wide range of decade programs and projects. With government representatives and members from across the breadth of ocean disciplines, the Committee includes established researchers and several early career ocean professionals all coming together to champion the UN Ocean Decade.
Read more about the decade on the UK National Decade Committee webpage UKNDC.
Future Decade ambitions
The Decade of Ocean Science provides a great opportunity for us to develop our science and increase the impact of our work by working in global partnerships.
Being launched in the middle of the Covid pandemic which has been followed by significantly destabilising global events, the UN Decade has had a slow and uneasy start. But the scale of the Conference in Barcelona – which received over 6,000 applications for attendance from around the world – demonstrates the growing momentum and global appetite for engagement in the Ocean Decade.
NP-GAN represents high-quality innovative science, nationally and internationally, but one of the lessons of recent years is that whilst the need for marine science is growing our capacity to deliver is limited. Working in networks provides both an opportunity for knowledge exchange and an opportunity to increase our impact.
