Nereus Program director (science) William Cheung (UBC) is a co-author on a new open access paper recently published in One Earth. In it, the authors write about using the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021 – 2030) as guide for using science to facilitate developing policy that can be translated into action. The authors address challenges associated with “technical, organizational, and conceptual scientific barriers”, which will need to be overcome in order to help achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They highlight the importance of social challenges and urge for integrating social, natural, and physical sciences which can be better achieved by using simplicity, transparency, and integrity to facilitate in exchanging knowledge between disciplines. Other needs addressed in the paper are using evidence-based decision making backed by science, using good data to support the science (such as the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) collecting physical, biogeochemical, biological and ecological data), collecting socioeconomic and sociocultural data, innovative ocean financing and investment, sharing ocean information and improving ocean literacy, promoting joint capacity building, and using the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development to promote transdisciplinary approaches and provide enabling conditions (e.g., capacity development, information sharing and outreach, including a diversity of voices, etc.). You can read the full abstract below:

Abstract: The health of the ocean, central to human well-being, has now reached a critical point. Most fish stocks are overexploited, climate change and increased dissolved carbon dioxide are changing ocean chemistry and disrupting species throughout food webs, and the fundamental capacity of the ocean to regulate the climate has been altered. However, key technical, organizational, and conceptual scientific barriers have prevented the identification of policy levers for sustainability and transformative action. Here, we recommend key strategies to address these challenges, including (1) stronger integration of sciences and (2) ocean-observing systems, (3) improved science-policy interfaces, (4) new partnerships supported by (5) a new ocean-climate finance system, and (6) improved ocean literacy and education to modify social norms and behaviors.Adopting these strategies could help establish ocean science as a key foundation of broader sustainability transformations.

The above description came from the reference below

Reference:

Caludet et al., A Roadmap for Using the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development in Support of Science, Policy, and Action, One Earth (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.10.012 link

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