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Who controls the narrative on the environment? Nereus researchers have been delving deeper into work on coastal Indigenous fisheries and as they develop relationships with Indigenous community members around the world, some are starting to rethink many of the core concepts of ocean governance.

The new Blue Paper “The Human Relationship With Our Ocean Planet”, co-authored by Dr. Yoshitaka Ota, commissioned by the Ocean Panel urges us to recognize the ocean’s role in not just providing material goods, but different forms of wellbeing including cultural identity, knowledge & sense of place and belonging.

Research Associate Marjo Vierros is lead author with a research team that includes Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, Daniel Dunn, Director Yoshi Ota, and Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor on a new study published in Marine Policy, “Considering Indigenous Peoples and local communities in governance of the global ocean commons.”

Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor is lead author with co-authors William Cheung, Muhammed Oyinlola, Gerald Singh, Wilf Swartz and Yoshitaka Ota on a new paper in Marine Policy – “Social equity and benefits as the nexus of a transformative Blue Economy: A sectoral review of implications”.

Past Event

23 October 2019 - 23 October 2019

Director (policy) Yoshitaka Ota (University of Washington) and program manager Wilf Swartz (Dalhousie University) will be attending the Our Ocean conference in Oslo, Norway and participating in a side event on Oct. 23rd - "Climate Change & The Ocean: Charting a Resilient Path Forward".

Research associate Suzanne von der Porten, Yoshi Ota, and Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor are co-authors on a new paper published online in the journal Coastal Management – ‘The Role of Indigenous Resurgence in Marine Conservation’.

October 1, 2019 | Indigenous

Vatosoa Rakotondrazafy receives the prestigious 2019 Whitley Award from The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) for her work with traditional small-scale fishing communities throughout Madagascar. Vatosoa previously worked with Nereus Program co-directors Yoshitaka Ota (policy) and William Cheung (science), and program manager/research associate Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor as a Nippon Foundation DOALOS fellow at University of British Columbia in 2015.

Nereus Fellow Guillermo Ortuño Crespo (Duke University) writes about the first Global Planning Meeting of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development that he, fellow Harriet Harden-Davies (ANCORS, University of Wollongong) and policy director Yoshitaka Ota (University of Washington) attended in Copenhagen, Denmark on May 13-15th.

Past Event

13 May 2019 - 15 May 2019

Nereus fellows Harriet Harden-Davies (Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), University of Wollongong) and Guillermo Ortuño Crespo (Duke University), and co-director Yoshitaka Ota (University of Washington) will be in Copenhagen, Denmark for the first Global Planning Meeting of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 13-15 May.

Nereus’s Yoshitaka Ota (Director of Policy, University of Washington) and Wilf Swartz (Program Manager, Dalhousie University) are co-authors on a recent article, entitled ‘Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Practices of the Largest Seafood Suppliers in the Wild Capture Fisheries Sector: From Vision to Action’. In it they discuss a framework that identifies and categorizes seafood suppliers’ practices based on their approaches to issues in the wild capture fisheries sector.

Nereus Principal Investigator Quentin Hanich (University of Wollongong) was recently named Editor-in-Chief for the journal Marine Policy and is joined by Nereus Director of Policy Yoshitaka Ota (University of Washington) and Megan Bailey (Dalhousie University) as Associate Editors.

January 24, 2019 | Law and Governance

Past Event

30 January 2019 - 1 February 2019

The Nereus Program, in collaboration with ANCORS, the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat and the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner is co-hosting a workshop in Suva, Fiji, 30 Jan – 1 Feb 2019. Yoshi Ota, Quentin Hanich (ANCORS, University of Wollongong) and Harriet Harden-Davies (ANCORS, University of Wollongong) will be attending.
Past Event

10 December 2018 - 11 December 2018

Yoshitaka Ota and Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor will be hosting a workshop in Seattle, WA focusing on the 'Blue Economy'.
Past Event

25 October 2018 - 25 October 2018

Yoshitaka Ota and Wilf Swartz will be organizing a workshop on Japanese fisheries reforms at the Pew Fellows Meeting in Sooke, BC, Canada on October 25th, 2018.

Nereus Director of Policy, Yoshitaka Ota, gave the keynote lecture at the 20 year anniversary symposium for Satoumi (Japanese coastal restoration) in the Okayama Prefecture in Japan.

September 12, 2018 | Coastal

Past Event

9 May 2018 - 10 May 2018

Nereus Policy Director Yoshitaka Ota will attend and speak at the Ocean Risk Summit in Bermuda. Leaders from across the political, economic, environmental and risk sectors will gather in Bermuda for the first Ocean Risk Summit.

Nereus Program Research Associate Lydia Teh (UBC), Principal Investigator Jack Kittinger (Arizona State University), and Yoshi Ota (University of Washington) joined a webinar organized by EBMTools to discuss “Socially Responsible Seafood.”

February 14, 2018

Nereus Program Director of Policy Yoshi Ota (University of Washington) attended the Association of Pacific Rim Universities’ (APRU) Annual Meeting, where he delivered a keystone speech on the interrelationships between oceans, climate change, and social equity, with an emphasis on their importance in contributing to sustainable development.

July 17, 2017

“Emptying seas, mounting tensions in fish-hungry Asia” was published yesterday by Nikkei Asian Review. It discusses the state and future of oceans and fisheries in Asia, with increasing demand yet overfished stocks, and features insights by Nereus Director of Policy Yoshitaka Ota.

November 4, 2016 | Fisheries

Gerald Singh is a Nereus Fellow working with Yoshitaka Ota and Andres Cisneros-Montemayor and collaborating with the United Nations Development Programme. Gerald is characterizing the contribution of a sustainable ocean to achieving broad sustainable development goals.

September 14, 2016 | Social Responsibility

Nereus Director of Policy Yoshitaka Ota acted as moderator at the International Symposium on Capacity Building for Sustainable Oceans from July 19 to 20 in Tokyo, Japan.

July 30, 2016 | Fisheries

Yoshitaka Ota, Nereus Program Director (Policy), and Rashid Sumaila, OceanCanada Research Director and Nereus Program Honorary Research Associate, acted as panelists during a talk by Marjo Vierros, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability and Liu Institute Visiting Fellow, given at the Liu Institute for Global Issues on April 27th.

May 18, 2016 | Law and Governance

 

Yoshitaka Ota

Ph.D., Anthropology
Program Director (Policy)
Director of Nippon Foundation, Ocean Nexus Center
Professor of Practice (University of Washington)

Yoshitaka Ota is Director (Policy) of the NF-UBC Nereus Program. He is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington. His main research is anthropology of fishing, assessing current global outlook of indigenous fishing and coastal food security. He also works on ocean governance and policy, marine spatial planning and knowledge communication.   View latest publications >View More

Gerald Singh

Ph.D., Resource Management and Environmental Studies

2016-2019 University of British Columbia

Assistant Professor (University of Victoria)

Gerald Singh is a Nereus Fellow working with Yoshitaka Ota and Andres Cisneros-Montemayor and collaborating with the United Nations Development Programme. Gerald is characterizing the contribution of a sustainable ocean to achieving broad sustainable development goals. Using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework, Gerald is researching how the SDGs are dependent on achieving sustainable use and management of the ocean.View More