World Ocean Forum

I Wonder Where the Sailors Are?

2010-02-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Recently came the news of the death of historian Howard Zinn, author of “The People’s History of the United States,” a contrarian view of American history that should be read by everyone regardless of political persuasion. Zinn provides a provocative alternative perspective on our nation’s story as institutionalized in the text books, a telling argument for taking a second look from a different point of view at something so complex and dynamic as human history.

I have always felt that Americans have no real understanding of our history as a maritime nation. The subject is mostly absent from the texts and the specific maritime histories have been most often enumerations of customs house documents, ship voyages, and the odd naval battle. Only recently has that begun to change as historians from other disciplines have discovered the broad impact and richness of maritime endeavor as a core theme in the American narrative.

Let’s take two points of view: internal and external. If you look at the topography of our nation, you see a system of watersheds – great lakes connected to rivers and the sea; streams descending from major mountain systems, east and west; and myriad rivers feeding the Mississippi, a central north south artery that splits the nation. Those waterways were the paths of early exploration and settlement. Many of our largest inland cities are located on the confluence of navigable rivers. The Erie Canal, an engineering marvel, linked the heartland to the east coast ports and Europe. Lewis and Clark followed the rivers and streams into the west, through the Rockies to the Pacific. Along these waterways passed the grain, cotton, tobacco, and other agricultural products, the iron and steel and coal and timber, and the manufactured goods, distributed internally, to the eastern ports like New York, Boston, Charleston, and Savannah and around Cape Horn to western ports of San Francisco and Seattle and beyond, as the essence of an emerging American world trade.

The external perspective is also instructive. It reveals that trade as more than export, rather the exchange of goods from Europe and further east, and, most importantly, the imported return, the arrival of immigrants, refugees from religious tyranny, entrepreneurs, and outlaws, who are our forbears by the thousands. We honor our few remaining indigenous people. But the rest of us came from away, from Ireland, Scotland and England, from Scandinavia, from Germany and Italy, from Africa (albeit an involuntary passage), and eventually from all the nations of the world, these diverse ethnicities combining to create the complex nation that we are. Most of these people came by ship across oceans, and, today, perhaps by different vessels, they are still coming.

What Zinn and other historians have recognized is that the principal value exchanged by this process was not just the trade goods and financial accounting, but also the ideas and beliefs, the art, the music, and the literature that are the cultural fabric of our moment. We listen to world music and appreciate world art. We are open to multiple religions and spiritual practice. We fuse food traditions, fashion, fads, medical treatments, exercise, sport, and language. We may have new and different portals now, but the process began long ago when the first sailors left shore in search of something beyond their own experience, beyond their limited horizon.

When I look at things now, I wonder where the sailors are. We have become fearful and oppositional and close-minded. We have become complacent within our horizon and hostile to new people and new ideas. We need historians like Howard Zinn, or new leaders to show us the way back to the sea, the sea that connects all things.

Live, from Copenhagen, Part Four

2009-12-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

OCEANS DAY has dawned in Copenhagen where more than 300 ocean experts, climate summit delegates, government ministers, and friends of the ocean gathered together at the European Environment Agency to hear Prince Albert II of Monaco open an event designed to force attention upon the inextricable link between climate and ocean.

Prince Albert II called the oceans "reservoirs of life and hope...the arena of new fears and challenges." He enumerated the risks of ocean warming, sea level rise, threats to biodiversity, and acidification, as well as the larger risk of "neglecting to meet these challenges." he described his personal witness of the effect of these conditions in the polar regions, particularly the Arctic.

He cited Monaco's contribution to the conservation of the Mediterranean, as headquarters to several international ocean research and management organizations and to the Oceanographic Museum founded 100 years ago by his grandfather, Prince Albert I, himself an oceanographer and expedition leader.

In conclusion, he invoked the ocean as "a last utopia," that, while time was short, was still possible to save through a "worldwide social link" between citizens on behalf of the sustainable ocean.

The OCEANS DAY agenda will continue with presentations on Impacts on Small Island Developing States, Tropical Environment, Polar Changes, Fishers and Aquaculture, and Marine Biodiversity.

Additional panels in the afternoon will focus on Ocean Acidification, The Coral Triangle, Mitigation and Adaptation Responses, National and Regional Responses, Mobilizing the Public and Private Sectors, and Strategies for Moving Forward an Ocean Agenda after COP-15.

To find additional information and interviews with many of the presenters and to comment on issues and response to Ocean Climate interaction, visit www.oceanclimate.org.

Live, from Copenhagen, Part Three

2009-12-13T03:25:00.003-08:00

The Climate Summit is half-way there, and, like Zeno's Paradox, you wonder how many half way's will get us anywhere. Bill McKibben asserts that 100,000 citizens marched through the streets of Copenhagen, with many more holding similar marches and vigils all around the world. Indeed, the number 350 is everywhere, as if "parts per million" is the new gold standard for morality against which we must all be measured. But, of course, we know morality is relative. In one of the side events at the Bella Center this week, serious scientists reported that data used to set such standards are also relative, with studies revealing that in many areas of the globe the actual situation is worse than what has been used for the baseline and that in those areas 350 may not be enough.

In parallel with that disconcerting concept is an interview from our Ocean=Climate website (www.oceanclimate.org)wherein another serious scientist strayed from his principled objectivity to muse on his feeling that the situation may not advance without direct action! His concern was that scientists have made the case for the people to judge and that, as citizens, only overt demands for change, public awareness millions strong, will reach the politicians effectively enough to make the difference.

It is easy enough to characterize political indifference to such demands as cynical response to the need to be re-elected or the influence of "vested interests," but it is nonetheless dismaying that representatives can ignore so stubbornly the needs of their constituents, whether for health care or strategies against global warming.

The nay-sayers argue that the science is not definitive and the crisis is not real. They worry about the "damage" done to our way of life if the scientists are wrong. Fair question. But they never look to the converse to ask what if the scientists are right, and we have done nothing? What does that imply for the perpetuation of our way of life? The only other concept I can remember from my philosophical education is Pascal's Wager, and I for one believe it's probably best to hedge your bets about the existence of God or whatever plague of locusts or emissions that in Her wisdom He has inflicted upon us.

Obfuscation and obstruction are indirect action, passive strategies that play upon fear and uncertainty. What is evident here is active engagement, in the plenary sessions and on the streets, one hundred thousand one hundred thousands with the courage to face the future.

Live, from Copenhagen, Part Two

2009-12-12T07:23:00.001-08:00

Neptune as Advocate. I spent the afternoon with over 60,000 friends in a parade for climate action -- walking from the Danish Parliament to the Bella Center where something called negotiation is taking place, deliberations earlier suspended by a desperate cry for help by Tuvalu, an island in danger of inundation by sea level rise, a nation facing an imminent annihilation of culture. Speaking yesterday with a member of the delegation from India, it became apparent that he was not aware, or certainly not telling, what his government's ultimate position might be. All the pressure seems to be on China; the news feeds show a pervasive campaign across the international press spectrum based on the premise that China and the United States are the key to any possible agreement and it's China's turn. Europe and Brazil are in; Russia dances around the edges; India remains, as always, a mystery that even its own people cannot explain.

Meanwhile the parade of protest continues, with floats and chanting anarchists, decorated baby carriages and any number of sweating volunteers in polar bear suits. Greenpeace continues to get the best "float" award, although in counterpoint, one group of artists, dressed in cream silk carried trays of grapes in favor of green capitalism, succeeded in offending the most fervid who had left their sense of humor back at camp with the bedroll. Our most poignant and effective interview was with a Somali woman with two children who understood exactly why the ocean was important -- "water," she said.

The World Ocean Observatory continues to record our series of interviews on the inextricable connection between ocean and climate, with a heavy emphasis on future solutions. The site is live at www.oceanclimate.org and the interviews will be posted as they are completed, surely by December 14 when the site will be launched at an Ocean Day event hosted by the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands at the European Environment Agency headquarters here in Copenhagen.

As the parade moved on, I was amazed at how little detritus was left behind -- the odd placard and drifting hand-outs, the police wagons with their men in riot gear untested, the less committed opting for complacency over exercise. Copenhagen looked absolutely beautiful, sun glinting on its marvelous twisting towers and colored brick facades, with the echo of spirited commitment lingering in the brisk winter air. Everything seemed possible. Neptune had it right.

Live, from Copenhagen

2009-12-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

Walking Copenhagen during the two weeks of the Climate Summit suggests what it would be like if everyone understood the critical challenge of climate change and was prepared to meet it. All the obvious signs are in place: the looming windmills, the myriad bicycles, the low emission public transportation, the hundreds of exhibits and signs and manifestations of people accepting climate change as a given and demanding solutions.

No ideological harangue. No t-bagging nonsense. No fear that change will somehow compromise the world economy and "our way of life," but determination rather that it will transform and revitalize the world economy and how we live. There is a palpable sense of possibility that is a very refreshing experience for an optimist somewhat beaten down by his country's suspicion and negativity and fearful stasis.

At the Bella Center, the huge meeting facility where the event is taking place, all the world is on parade, more than 190 nations represented. There are the delegates and negotiators; there are the observers from hundreds of organizations around the world with commitment enough to the issue to use their limited financial resources to come and be heard in Copenhagen. And then there are the bright orange t-shirts of what seems an infinity of young people, students who rightly claim the future as theirs to live and want to make certain that those of us responsible for the situation will take the steps to make it right. Finally, outside, there the estimated 50,000 protesters with their banners, slogans, costumes, and righteous pranks who are demanding that those inside do MORE, not less, do SOMETHING not nothing, do RIGHT not wrong by denying an opportunity to make the world a better place at least for forever.

Bill McKibben's 350.org movement is also here with 350 observers representing the millions all over the world mobilized in the name of that achievable emissions goal -- a project, according to CNN, that is the largest manifestation of public expression in the name of the environment ever. Coming from a culture of denial, this sense of awareness and political will is an exhilarating and motivating context in which to pledge to take some meaningful part.

I am here for the ocean, a global system locked in a constant dance with climate. Neither can survive without the other. Specifically, the World Ocean Observatory is working with the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands to build a new Ocean=Climate website to examine the full range of impact of climate change on ocean systems and to stimulate a global conversation about these issues. Please go to www.oceanclimate.org, have a look around, and speak your mind. The site will be supported and linked to ocean and climate-related organizations around the world, to science centers and museums, universities and schools, and to individuals who wish to be informed about what is, what is being done, and what others have to say about it.

I urge you to join the conversation, even if you can't do so live, from Copenhagen.

Ocean, Africa...and Football

2009-10-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Recently, I noticed a small press story announcing an underwater fiber optic cable linking Europe, India, and east Africa -- a few inches of type indicative of an astonishing advance in global communications.

Most of us are unaware of the number of such cables that snake across the ocean floor to link us via telephone, fax, television, data transfer, email, and Internet connection. We call Europe as if it was just down the road; we email Japan as if it was just across the bay. We take it all for granted and exploit the astonishing value of connection for our businesses and our personal endeavors.

But Africa! We envision an endless desert, poverty, an image of backwardness and isolation antithetical to the technology and obsessive communication in our own lives. Visiting Africa, of course, both denies and confirms this vision by the stunning juxtaposition of affluence with poverty, of entrepreneurial optimism with desperation and hopelessness.

In July, via a 17,000 kilometer submarine fiber optic cable, SEACOM, a company 77% owned by African investors, completed a global network between France, India, south and east Africa was completed and commissioned, linking London, Marseilles and Europe, Delhi and south Asia, with Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, and Addis Ababa. The cable has an enormous capacity for data transfer -- 1.2 terabytes per second -- to enable high definition TV, peer-to-peer networks, IPTV, and surging Internet demand at prices realistic for the African market.

The ownership structure varies for each segment of the cable, ensuring local ownership of the cable segments connecting individual countries and to comply with regulations in those countries. The cable backbone along the east coast of Africa and to India and Europe is owned by SEACOM. The segments connecting to individual countries are either 100% (South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, France) or 35% (Tanzania, Kenya) locally owned by local investors. A small group of international investors with no other telecommunication involvement in the individual countries constitute a minority share.

Initial investment was also provided by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, an international development agency dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and building economically sound enterprises in the developing world. The Fund is active in 16 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Mali, Mozambique, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda.

Suddenly, for better or for worse, Africa is connected. The World Ocean Observatory, for example, can now link to teachers and students in African universities, schools, and environmental groups, heretofore almost impossible. We can now provide ocean curriculum, interact with classrooms in real time, and transfer distance-learning modules with ease to African ocean nations. The sea connects all things!

As importantly, there is now also bandwidth to meet the needs of the Confederations Cup and the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa, as well as the growing requirements of the economies in the countries served. I suppose it is fair to say that football and finance are international forces comparable to the connective power and community engagement of the ocean itself.

Ocean, Climate, and Copenhagen

2009-10-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

As part of a global coalition of ocean organizations, the World Ocean Observatory is preparing a new independent website on Ocean and Climate to be launched at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The purpose is to demonstrate the absolute connection between two dynamic natural systems with pervasive impact on almost every aspect of our lives.

The problem lies in a disconnect in our thinking. It is amazing to see how indifferent climate policy has been to ocean issues; indeed, even Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" almost belittles the ocean as a secondary function of climate when in fact it is very much the other way around. The specific language being developed for Copenhagen has largely ignored the ocean, and only through the intervention by many NGO’s, in the United States and Europe, has that oversight begun to be remedied. It may still not be enough.

But of course that is the fear for the proposed new treaty in general – not enough, not soon enough, not effective enough. The situation is plagued by two political divides -- between the developed nations and between the developed nations and the rest of developing world. The first is a function of commitment and degree. In the United States, for example, many individuals and political figures are unwilling to accept the research on global warming and its predictable impacts and oppose legislative actions, treaties, and behavioral change on ideological grounds. In addition, there is a divide between the nations over the type and degree of action necessary – cap and trade versus carbon tax for example.

The second divide has the developing nations objecting to change required by conditions not of their making and insisting on enormous financial aid to subsidize the cost of imposed new strategies for adaptation and mitigation. The developed countries want to invest in very specific actions with measurable outcomes, while the developing countries want to receive unrestricted compensation.
But the dichotomy is false. In fact, the developing world has as much to lose as the developed nations, should the research models prove to be true. But there is no need to await the future when radical change in weather events is already disrupting traditional patterns of settlement, agriculture, and health. The reports of unexpected, extreme weather phenomena are pervasive – hurricanes and cyclones, droughts and wild fires, mudslides and floods, affecting thousands of people around the world. Consequent social disruption, pollution of water supplies, physical and economic collapse, and the outbreak of previously controlled diseases are just some of the outcomes already tragically prevalent in coastal and other communities around the world.

Fifteen of the world’s largest cities are located in the coastal zone, including New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Cairo. We know the devastation of Katrina in New Orleans, an event from which we in the US seem to have learned very little. Sea level rise and coastal surge are two of the most obvious indicators of the chain of connection between CO2 emissions, global warming, and polar and glacial melt. And yet we dither and dispute, day in day out, protecting our narrowest interest and denying both cause and effect, ignoring the research, debating the policy, and doing little in a collective global catharsis of ignorance and selfishness that will do harm to us all and to our children.

The Rejuvenatory Power of the Ocean

2009-09-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

This summer I was able to get away for three weeks at sea, not a bold deep water crossing but that wonderful cruising, mostly down east, that is such a rejuvenatory part of living in Maine. With wife and dog, we gunk-holed from cove to cove, occasionally rafting up with friends, mostly going it alone, guided by wind and weather. Two storms passed through – one had us on a mooring in the Benjamin River, the other had us cozy for two days in the Mud Hole at Great Wass Island.

It has been a strange summer for us all, and instructive in how weather can affect not only our gardens, but also our psyches. The constant rain of June and July, and the unavailability of the boat, taken to Nova Scotia by our partners, made for an odd compensatory mixture of compulsive work and introspection, a different way of being, provocative, frustrating, sometimes depressing. It was typical to hear grousing and complaint, dour thoughts and dire opinions, from friends and neighbors.

I spent more time reading, for me always a diversion, a dive into the calming waters of narrative, a good story, the odd poem. I had been recommended an ocean book, The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils, by Kimberly C. Patton, a professor of comparative and historical study of religion at the Harvard Divinity School (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007). I was unsure about an academic text with chapter titles like "Ocean as Divinity and Scapegoat," or "The Crisis of Modern Pollution," or "The Purifying Sea in the Religious Imagination." But Professor Patton surprised me with her observations about the sea and the supernatural, the marine rituals of ancient Greece, Hindu submarine fire, and Sedna, the Inuit indwelling spiritual force, or Sea Mother. Part historian, part theologian, part folklorist, part cultural anthropologist, Patton made me think about the ocean again differently, to pause the pursuit of the science or economics or governance of the marine ecosystem, and immerse myself in the psychological swim, the realization and understanding of value in the ocean that is aesthetic, moral, perhaps divine, that has been known, articulated, and expressed ceremonially for all time.

Her text explores the idea of pollution as both the unreflected dumping of waste into the ocean, a kind of senseless vandalism, and as a rejuvenatory element that can cleanse us of despair. “In tons of water,” she writes. “in saltiness, in bottomless depth and endless horizon, and, above all, in the many forms of ceaseless motion, human populations, especially those who live along the littoral, see – and have always seen – in the world’s oceans a mighty, efficacious means of ‘cleansing’ our habitat and making it safe and viable.”

The sea, she suggests, is both familiar and strange, and represents a place of reunion, of heart and mind, body and soul, past and future, abandonment and dedication to the meaningful things in our lives. In 1921, after a long separation from the ocean, William Faulkner wrote to his mother:

"Then suddenly, you see it, a blue hill going up and up, beyond the borders of the world, to the salt colored sky, and white whirling necklaces of gulls, and,if you look long enough, a great vague ship, solemnly going somewhere. I can’t express how it makes me feel to see it again, there is a feeling of the utmost inner relief, as if I could close my eyes, knowing that I had found again someone who loved me years and years ago."

US Supreme Court and the Ocean

2009-07-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, a NY Times article reported on decisions about environmental matters by the US Supreme Court in its latest session. The article, quoting Richard J. Lazarus of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, pointed to the consistently negative decisions in cases brought by environmental organizations.

What was most interesting was the nature of the cases. The justices allowed the US Navy to test sonar proven to threaten migrating whales, to challenge US Forest Service regulations against dumping mining waste in Alaskan lakes, to limit liability of corporations responsible for toxic spills, and to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to use cost benefit analysis to decide how much marine life may be killed by cooling structures at power plants.

As you might imagine, these decisions were greatly acclaimed by their winners, related interests and corporations, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Amazingly, every decision resulted in a threat against a healthy ocean. Research has proven the negative impact of certain frequency sonar on whale populations, and lower courts had decided, and were upheld on appeal, that the Navy’s argument based on national security was unjustified. Reversed. Over-ruled. Limiting corporate liability for the perpetrators of toxic spills, most frequently in coastal waters, removes responsibility for the event and delimits adequate resources for clean up, repair and mitigation. Mining waste in lakes may account for the ever-increasing presence of heavy metals in the draining streams and rivers, with continuing detrimental impact through the watershed all the way to the sea. And, finally, anyone who has ever played with an Excel spreadsheet knows how cost-benefit analysis can be adjusted to justify almost anything. Fish vs. power-plants: how do we do the math?

Just how much marine life can be sacrificed to permit a cooling structure for a power plant? How do we calculate the true value of the structure? For example, beyond construction cost do we also include the negative value of the CO2 emitted by that plant and its impact on climate and the world economy? Do we include the energy cost of the oil or coal that has been transported internationally or mined regionally with additional negative environmental expense? And what about the marine life? Is it valued simply as the market cost for useless biomass? Or is it valued for its reproductive potential lost along with the fecundity of the nearby spawning ground? Do we include its value as a source for food or fertilizer or pharmaceuticals? Do we calculate its place in an economic chain of related employment and downstream community viability? To reach the desired conclusion, just re-state the premises to your advantage. This EPA analysis could take forever, lead to a false conclusion, and, probably, provide more work for judges.

Are we prepared to accept that a true calculation might just demonstrate that the value of the marine life is greater than the value of the plant? Will the US Chamber of Commerce accept the outcome of a true cost-benefit analysis based on ecosystem calculations and social cost estimates that demonstrate the power plant is a negative contributor to the economy while the marine life is not?

The Supreme Court, tilted as it apparently is to a conservative, strict constructionist viewpoint, has by these decisions contributed cogently and deliberately to forces that will continue to poison the land and sea. Ironically, these decisions are evidence of just how blind justices can be, and, like the toxins enabled, they serve for life.

World Ocean Day

2007-06-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

June 8 is World Ocean Day, one of those designated moments intended to focus universal consciousness on a particular issue in the press and other media outlets. Depending on the enthusiasm of various organizers, there may be a few articles, a TV spot, some photogenic beach clean-ups and other activities that demonstrate a local interest, however fleeting, in the health of the world ocean.

But why isn’t every day world ocean day? Why is it that we succumb to the illusion that such concentration of effort on an arbitrary date will somehow contribute significantly to the year-round challenge of building public awareness and political will for a sustainable ocean? Isn’t one day just too little, too late to make any difference?

This fallacy is not limited to facile public relations. In international conferences of ocean experts, I hear the constant lament that the best research efforts and the most fervid calls for action fall mostly on deaf ears and that only increased education and global outreach can counter this ignorance and indifference -- and yet these very same observers will admit in the next breath that their organizational budgets and staff for these critical functions are severely under-funded, indeed frequently non-existent. If there is a problem, why do they ignore the most obvious solution? Do they really mean it?

The amount of energy and funds directed toward World Ocean Day is misspent. Those resources would be much better invested in ocean literacy efforts in the schools, or a cooperative program pooling organizational budgets for on-going press briefings on ocean issues, or for advocacy initiatives to promote a national ocean policy in the United States.

World Ocean Day is momentarily useful, but what’s left for the other 364?

Fear of Ocean Governance? Why?

2007-02-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

The ocean is often described as "the last wilderness" or "a vast commons." It is neither. Civilization has left its mark for centuries in the itineraries of ships, the migration of peoples, the records of trade and exploration, and the interactions of nations. Sea power has served as a major force in the shaping of culture, and competition for the natural resources of the ocean has affected the livelihood of an historic succession of settlement and empire. Today, the challenge of governance faces the ocean with all the complexity and contradiction faced on land. The community of nations has evolved a Law of the Sea, a treaty and legal work-in-progress that begins to address the conflict of proprietary interests in the ocean, the sustainability of valuable food supply and mineral wealth, and the future exploitation of an environment about which we know not enough. Various agreements and admistrative tools have evolved to mitigate conflict, protect national interests, and maintain the natural and cultural values inherent in the global ocean. The need is defined and many suggestions for improved governance and progressive action are in place.

But the United States does not respond with alacrity or substance. Why?

Why should the US Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (comprised of representatives of the two national commissions that examined American ocean policy and made substantial recommendations in 2004) this week give a second year "grade" of C- (up from last year's D+) on progress to date? Reading the reports, the improvements in various categories are subtle at best, nuanced in terms of small, cosmetic first steps and bureaucratic adjustments with no substantial further actions or resources to follow. It would not take much to conclude that almost no advancement has occurred.

Why should the US remain one of the two major ocean nations that has not yet become party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea despite strong public support, Congressional initiatives, and a letter of endorsement from President George W. Bush? Why, with all that, does necessary, meaningful action never quite get taken?

Why should the prospects for H.R 21 The Ocean Conservation, Education and National Security Act (Oceans-21), introduced in the House of Representatives on the first day of the 110th Congress, seem uncertain despite the shift in power resulting from the 2006 mid-term elections?

Why should the announcement of the largest marine protected area in the world (140,00 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaii Islands Marine National Monument) merit such vapid reception by the public, press and ocean conservation movement, seemingly interpreted as little more than a superficial gesture affecting little beyond the livelihood of the few fishers who can no longer fish there?

Why does a nation with the largest ocean Exclusive Economic Zone, with such a huge reliance on the ocean for its economic future, not get beyond the recommendations to assume leadership through exemplary actions, particularly when the financial resources demanded are so relatively small and the capacity to execute is in hand?

I'm perplexed. What is really going on here? I'd be interested in your reasons why?

Leap of Faith -- Climate Change

2007-02-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who is locked in a mortal dialogue with a college roommate about the existence of....global warming.

Forty years ago, when these two were inhabiting a funky House at Harvard, the argument would have been about God. But today it pits them in the 21st century amphitheater, long after the existence of God has been settled, and new questions abound. My friend is a Liberal, excuse me, Progressive, albeit a listening, inquisitive one. The roommate is a Conservative, certain as the day is long. It is a titanic encounter.

On February 5, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first major report since 2001 in which it declared that the fact of global warming was "unequivocal" and that human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants and automobile exhaust was 90-99% likely to be the cause. Certainty was just short of the margin of error. When the report was inserted into the dialogue above, the roommate exploded in a hurricane of denial, alternative papers, contradictory web links, and even more fervid assertions of hoax. As with so much that passes for dialogue in America these days, no exchange of views became possible; civility declined; no evidence could persuade; there was no "ex," and there would be no "change."

So, the evidence of climate change as evinced in sea temperature rise and the relationship of ocean conditions to the genesis of ever more powerful storms was dismissed, just as was all the rest of the distinguished science and consequent analysis in the report. The event was reduced to a concretized heavyweight bout, Improbable vs. Probable, all grunt, no finesse. It was the tenth round; my friend was exhausted in his corner.

The situation called for some last blow, some penultimate move that would put the Conservative down. As second, I reached into my tired bag of tricks, remembered from my own sophomoric arguments of times past (west coast version, more sunshine) and brought out the "What if" rebut, a tactic invented by an old French titan, Blaise "The Wager" Pascal. Regarding the existence of God, it is true that rational evidence is not complete or certain, but "what if" one is wrong? What if there is a God, then one's denial means certain, catastrophic consequence. Like, er, death, damnation and the descent to Hell.

Hell indeed. Fictional renderings of a post-industrial world devastated by the projected impacts of global warming and other ecological betrayals (see the novelist William Gibson, all titles) do not paint a pretty picture (unless your taste in art runs to Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the Japanese hell scrolls). Even the Conservative -- not imagining, but rationally extrapolating the negatives-- might quake at the envisoned circumstances bequeathed to his children. Why risk it? Why take the chance and deny God in the small things, all contrary evidence notwithstanding? Aren't the consequences of such denial just too great?

Does this logic not pertain as well to the question of climate change? How can it be responsible to accept any percentage of improbability when the stakes are so high? How many Katrina's and devastated cities will it take to change the odds? Even if science can provide no absolute certainty, how can we responsibly ignore the verity of study after study, proof after proof? As we have seen so often during the past few years, adherance to ideological positions in the face of contradictory realities has caused terrible pain and devasting consequence. Should the Conservative not pursue Pascal's leap of faith, his affirmation of the unaffirmable as calculated risk? What if he holds fast to his immutable denial and inaction prevails? Are the rest of us prepared to drown in his ideological mistake? Is he?

The ocean plays an essential role in both the problem and solution to climate change. Its sustainability relates directly to the sustainability of climate, just as it does to fresh water, energy, food production and other essential contributions to the future of human survival. We can accept no denials, nor lack of action based on stubborn ideological beliefs. The cause and effect of ocean sustainability are ours to control; we created the conditions and we must change our behavior to redress the damage. There is little time for intellectual niceties; there is too little time for action. Failure to take the leap of faith, to ignore the evidence of critical contamination of the earth's resources, is irresponsible. Failure to take the leap of faith is the best opening for a knock-out punch for us all.

International Environmental Education

2007-01-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

In his recent critique of the international environmental movement, Red Sky at Morning, James Gustave Speth lists eight transitions required to move environmental actions from the accomplishments of the 20th century to the requirements of the 21st. The last three pertain specifically to the question of International Environmental Education: the transformation of knowledge and learning, a new seriousness about global environmental governance, and an expanded public awareness of environmental sustainability as a fundamental human right.

At the heart of all Speth’s transitions lies a demand for increased scientific and environmental literacy. And at the heart of literacy of any sort lies well-ordered effective education.

What It Is:

In the United States and certain other developed countries, environmental education has made significant in-roads into public consciousness as well as educational programs of every level of education. Thus, on many fronts, political will in the form of either protest against certain degrading actions and policies or affirmation of countervailing actions, is evident. Moreover, formal programs at the graduate, undergraduate, and secondary levels are well established, and informal, experiential programs have also found a sympathetic audience.

What becomes immediately apparent, however, is that beyond a small perimeter of affluent nations, the programs collapse into erratic, anecdotal initiatives of varying quality and effect. These programs fall into four general categories and can be characterized as useful but inadequate.

Resource Directories: There are a number of resource centers operated by UNESCO and other governmental organizations and such NGO’s as World Resources Institute and the WorldWide Fund for Nature. In many cases, these are directories organized by nation or subject interest; in other cases, they are web-based activity centers that require motivation, access, a willingness to engage in superficial activity, and, frequently, the ability to read English. In every case, the predictable user is educated and interested and probably best served by the discovery of a new activity, idea, or organization to promote an already developed interest.

What directories do provide, however, is a database for possible international contacts. For example, an excursion into the UNESCO site International Directory of Environmental Education Institutions finds fifteen listings, all but one a university-based or research institute program. One does discover the Theeerthamalai Environmental Awareness Movement, a NGO serving a Tamil-speaking rural population through non-formal educational activities. Bulgaria has two listings, one of which is the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which promotes “information” to all levels of education, and the other is the national university. This small, but representative sample suggests that the level of activity and sophistication beyond the United States is significantly less, even non-existent.

International Linked Programs: A second category represents a single NGO managing a network of partner entities around a single subject. For example, ECO-Schools International, created by the European Commission in 1995, purports to address the objectives of Agenda 21 and to connect some 10,000 schools worldwide through a certification program (Green Flag and Blue Flag schools) based on didactic principles and a management system based on “an ISO14001/EMAS approach.” A closer look at what is actually offered as educational service, capacity building, and evaluation, however, suggests more of a statistical exercise than a serious experiment in the classroom. The program appears well intended, but superficial and disconnected.

Such an organization could be an effective system for communication and distribution of educational product; however at this point it seems concretized by bureaucratic objectives, restrictions, and justifications.

Specific Curricula: There are few places to go to find a central repository for curriculum that could be used and/or adapted by a teacher to a specific classroom use. There are nevertheless many such curricula to be discovered, typically the product of a particular teacher or local association of teachers and published on the web. For example, there is a Caribbean maritime science curriculum that could be effectively used in any developing nation or coastal community school, but finding this resource is unfortunately the result of teacher word-of-mouth, dogged perseverance, random access, or sheer luck.

NGO Programs: Certain larger NGO’s have developed significant field programs correlative to their mission. For example, Conservation International has programs on the ground in Guyana, Indonesia, Botswana, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Suriname which involve exhibits, workshops, capacity-building (interpreter and volunteer training), eco-tourism, and primary school curriculum. Other NGO’s have comparable programs, however these seem targeted primarily to conservation professionals and workers, rather than to schools.

Of all the programs discovered in this assessment, this model seems the most direct and effective. But one needs to ask what percentage of the financial resources available is actually delivered versus what percentage is used in the NGO’s overhead, administrative infrastructure, and management. Clearly, the best application of this model is to maximize the cost-benefit ratio and deliver as much value as possible to the community.

The Literature:

A quick survey of the literature discovers various suggestions for the improvement in scientific literacy in developing countries. Typical suggestions include the need for more funds, more materials, translations of existing materials, capacity-building at the university level, developing personal relationships with mentor scientists and teachers, international exchange, scholarships for graduate programs in the developed nations, and other predictable high cost information-sharing activities.

Dr. June George, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of the West Indies, Trinidad, however, suggest one very interesting approach. In a paper entitled “Culture and Science Education: A Look from the Developing World,” Dr. George reviews “the science for all” movement wherein the science of daily living or indigenous tradition is “bridged” to conventional science both in the classroom and the field and “related” to patterns of thought, argument, and teaching with which the students are culturally familiar. Dr. George’s paper can found at http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/george.html.

The dichotomy is not a new one: the conflicting approaches of received learning, delivery of a didactic lesson through formal presentation, versus experiential learning, discovery of a flexible lesson through informal engagement.
It would seem clear by now – and anecdotal proof ought to be good enough – that for many students, regardless of culture, the second way is more than viable, indeed is tremendously effective as a method for alternative learning.

The integration of the two is not easy.

Who, and How to Serve:

Poverty = Educational Resources = Environmental Conditions = Quality of Life

This basic inter-relationship between these elements suggests that the highest benefit to be derived from innovation in international environmental education falls to the poorest with the least. If there can be an intervention, an improvement in the educational services provided, then there can be a consequent improvement in conditions for learning, living and collective opportunity.

How to serve?

What is required is the provision of direct training of local teachers in new methods of integration of environmental science and conservation values for the classroom and in the field through new curricula and practical teaching materials designed to affirm the cultural conditions of the community and to meet the educational needs of the indigenous student population.

What is required is a series of demonstrations, location by location, nation by nation, by which to invent this method, to select and train teachers in its delivery, to provide the inexpensive, practical resources, to implement in the classroom, to evaluate the outcomes, and to follow-up with additional contact and training on an annual basis.

What is required is a directed funding stream that maximizes local effect and minimizes infrastructure cost either by providing grant-based augmented services through existing organizations in country or by supporting a small base central organization managing contract curriculum developers, resources designers, teacher trainers, and evaluators on a nation by nation basis.

World Ocean Time

2007-01-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

As we pass the solstice and calendar New Year, forgive me a few ruminations and questions...

With such passage, my thoughts looked to time, to the turning of a cycle, an interval against which to measure passage -- physically, psychologically, professionally, socially, financially, politically -- toward a variety of destinations. I got to thinking about "ocean time," the ocean as a dynamic system that contains within it cycles of growth, shifts in condition, and patterns of human behavior. I got to thinking about the ocean as a keeper of geological, climatological and social change that is as ancient as a techtonic shift, as unpredictable as the weather, and as immediate at today's breaking news. I thought to bracket increments, the interval, for example, between the tragic loss of ferry passengers yesterday in the Java Sea and the detritus of a Roman ship lost centuries ago and scattered on the floor of the Adriatic. I got to thinking about the ocean as a primordial clock, inexorably counting, tracking, marking time.

So what will it record this year? Will we see a vast shift in political understanding of and repsonsive action to the effect of climate change on the ocean, sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification? Will we invest significant financial resources in the research and development of technologies that will release the enormous capacity for energy production from ocean systems? Will we discover galvanic consensus on fisheries science, management, and governance that will not only support fishers but also the millions of individuals worldwide who depend on ocean products for protein and health? Will we focus on the polticial and economic structures required to address the tremendous disconnect in policy and action between terrestial development, fresh water supplies, sanitation, and the ocean? Will we realize that the goal of a sustainable ocean represents an extraordinary opportunity to modify patterns of use of environmental resources on land and sea, to mitigate past mistakes through therapeutic regeneration of coastal systems, and to relieve poverty and generate economic and social good through creative thinking and community development?

Is now the time?

Data, Data Everywhere, but not a Drop to Drink

2006-12-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

For years, a standard rejection of certain claims about the condition of the ocean, climate, air quality, and most other environmental matters has been the lack of comprehensive data on which to base a decision. Fair enough, and researchers have subsequently layed to with all manner of projects, devices and systems to collect the raw information, to define the baselines, and to guide the policy-makers toward actions based on "science."

There have been frequent complaints about financial resources, and it is true that many sources of such funding, primarily government agencies, have declined over the past few years or have succumbed to the more vociferous demands of researchers in other areas of inquiry. Nonetheless, millions have been invested in satellites, land and water-based monitoring systems, and institutional alliances with the express purpose of providing the data -- the fundamental knowledge -- about the changing conditions of the terrestial and maritime environment worldwide.

One such is an intergovernmental group called the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and its recently unveiled Internet-based comprehensive data site, GEONETCast (www.earthobservations.org/about/about-GEO.html). A system of systems, the endeavor is run by a consortium that includes the European Organization for the Exploitation of Satellites, the World Meteorological Organization, and the governments of the United States and China. A visit to the site reveals an ambitious ten-year plan, a list of acronyms representing many other member organizations, and some teasing glimpses into what the system is now and will be.

In order to benefit from this valuable material (said to be available free), a connection involving a dish and associated ware must be purchased at an estimated cost of US$1500, a fee which may not delay connection by some additonal agencies, but will certainly deny access to many other potential users such as schools, libraries, and other organizations engaged in informing the public, the invisible thousands who not only pay for the system through their taxes, but also have a need to know as urgent as the researchers.

It could be argued that their need is much greater as they are the instrument of awareness and consequent political action that ultimately drives increased funds and behaviorial change. Indeed, there is buried in the GEO Secretariat an element called "outreach" which, one presumes, means more than increased organizational membership and is devoted to finding ways to make this system easily accessible to all users.

This is a pet peeve of mine. I attend many meetings of ocean organizations, typically attended by accompished program managers and policy-makers whose constant lament is that no one understands what they do. I always ask about their agency's communications department, usually to discover that the budget, if any, is typically less than 2% of the total and that the outreach position was cut by retirement or downsizing and is yet to be refilled two years later.

The fact is that the leadership of most of the agencies do not understand their need for public engagement as a key element in the realization of their mission. To make any serious attempt requires minimal resources at the least, far beyond an annual report, a special pamphlet, or a web-site label. Slowly, some agencies have seen that education and public relations are a necessity, not just as a financial or political strategy but rather as a social strategy that relates their good work to circumstances in the marketplace, in the community. Whatever your opinion about micro-loans, for example, there is no doubt that that innovative link between a global strategy to alleviate poverty and individual lives on the ground created a transformative socio-economic effect, a brilliant connection that advanced everyone.

Communications is a discipline like science. It needs competent, imaginative individuals to do the work, the technical and financial resources to reach a vast audience, and an energetic committment by civil servants to meet the needs of civil society thirsty for knowledge.

The Sea Connects All Things...

2006-12-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

Another voice, say you, in an ocean of voices....

It is with predictable trepidation that I launch this vessel for communication about the future of the ocean, a topic as infiinite as the ocean itself. But it seems clear that public awareness about ocean issues remains diminished, erratic, and frequently confused. In 1998, the Independent Commission of the Future of the Oceans, a global committee of ocean experts chaired by Mario Soares of Portugal, observed "The problems of the oceans are multi-faceted. They have many dimensions, including moral and ethical ones. These find tangible expression in the inequalities of opportunity existing between rich and poor nations and in the absence of mechanisms to ensure that all nations and peoples benefit equitably from the uses of the oceans and the exploitation of their resources. They are also manifest in the failure to safeguard the interests of future generations."

The Commission went on to observe that public awareness of the ocean and, hence political will for its protection, is critically low and to recommend the creation of a World Ocean Observatory, the host for this Forum, as an imperative strategy for building understanding of ocean issues through information and educational services. The Observatory defines the ocean as "an integrated global SOCIAL system," and therefore attempts to relate ocean systems to other key human needs such as fresh water, food, energy, trade, transportation, public health, labor practice, international finance, governance, culture, and community development. It does so through the provision of organized informational services such as a news service, monthly letter on provocative ocean issues, downloadable exhibits, and key links, as well as educational events designed to connect classrooms worldwide with ocean experts in the field. The Observatory came on-line in January 2006 and now includes a Directory of 13,500 ocean organizations, a subscription list of 6,000, and visitors (December 2006) from 116 nations. Many new programs are planned for 2007.

I realize the ambition of such an endeavor, its many impracticalities and challenges. Nonetheless, the Observatory is committted to responsible, independent perspective and to the provision of all services at NO cost to the users. It will not compromise content with commercial advertising, sale of product, or pleas for donations.

What is the purpose of this Forum?

My hope is to engage you in a global dialogue about ocean issues, as animated and difficult as that may be. My role will be to post questions or to make observations that will challenge participants to pursue particular issues, to offer additional information and opinion, and to become a part of a new ocean commons: a community of articulate ocean activists who through individual and collective action worldwide will work to sustain the oceans "for the benefit of all mankind."

I invite you to join the World Ocean Forum.