World Ocean Radio - Ecosystems
The debate over the reality of climate change is over. There is no place on land or sea that is immune from the effects of extreme weather, fire, flood, inundation, erosion, and social impacts. This week we're discussing carbon as the key culprit to our current condition, and the multitudinous methods and suggestions and investments to remove carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean. Is it possible we've made this all too complicated? Might the solutions be right there, in front of us, having already been discovered at the technological, political, and regulatory levels? What does it look like if we apply simplicity, imagination, collaboration, and energy to guide our way forward, toward solutions?
As we review the state of climate change challenge and response, it becomes clear we are not succeeding. Is it possible to craft a new economic system that values natural resource sustainability over depletion of those resources? Can we conceive a new economics, a forward-directed system of financial valuation and exchange based on the asset value of Nature? We're discussing this and more this week on World Ocean Radio.
"The state of the ocean is not good." So states Vidar Helgesen in the forward to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) State of the Ocean Report that was released in May. This week on World Ocean Radio we are summarizing the findings.
Bio-regions on Earth are organized into types, then realms, and are further distinguished and mapped for planning, strategizing, developing, and as a tool for protection of the planet. A major trouble with bio-regional mapping is that it neglects nearly 83 percent of the ocean–beyond marine protected areas–leaving the high seas and deep sea unaddressed and vulnerable.
What are the five areas of our collective existence on earth where the ocean matters most? If we are looking for a context to drive motivation and action, we have in our view the necessary clear focus through these absolutes--water, energy, food, health, and exchange--that can guide us toward a sustainable future, with the ocean at our center.
40% of the planet is used for farming and livestock, often degraded by unsustainable or destructive practices. Coupled with coastal, wetland and reclaimed land development in the name of urban expansion, we are fast-approaching a tipping point wherein infrastructure exceeds demand. What to do? Are we destined to repeat the mistakes of the past? Or do we possess the collective will to develop creative solutions for repair, redesign and reconstruction for our 21st century transportation, supply, and municipal needs?
Seafood is a world staple, under siege by increased consumption and over-fishing. Aquaculture is the necessary alternative, yet is a polarizing issue in coastal communities. What are we to do? This week we explore two Maine-based successes in aquaculture that are building local supply chains, increasing resilience in rural communities, promoting environmentally responsible solutions, and integrating indigenous and cultural knowledge and skills for an emerging industry.
"We are not blind to the overall problem, and if we were in doubt, recent climate-explained events, near and far, should open our eyes more widely. With climate conditions constantly in the news, public awareness must follow," says Peter Neill, director of the World Ocean Observatory. This week on World Ocean Radio we wrap up a two-part series with a message of hope.
This week on World Ocean Radio as part of the multi-part RESCUE series we revisit the concept of ecosystem services accounting and propose that, in order to create a culture of investment for our future, we must apply energy, imagination and innovation to enable transition and success. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a hypothetical tale of investment, manufacture and accounting, and the financial analyses of both sides of the balance sheet: the initial investments and benefits to investors and the long-term debits of extraction, public health, emissions, downstream effect, and what is left behind. What would project proposal budgets look like if all near and long-term costs were included? Would projects be viable and approvable? How would investments, incentives, and subsidies be recalculated? Would the public approve and would such projects be feasible at all?
RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with a call for a new valuation of ecosystem services and natural resources that reflects the true costs of goods, services and ecosystem functions inclusive to habitat, food, water, regulation and recycling that serve human populations now and in the future.
RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week the multi-part RESCUE series continues with an advancement of the sub-theme of technology. We're talking about the pitfalls of modern agriculture, examples of sustainable fisheries, and the innovative ways that we might farm the marine environment that positively impact human health and have a regenerative, sustainable response to our harvest and use. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a continuation of UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In early March, the UN finalized a consensus agreement to work toward the conservation and protection of ocean resources and ecosystems. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss the disruption and potential sabotage of the Nord Stream Line, the underwater natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic that connect Poland to Norway, causing enormous leaks of methane within the ocean and atmosphere. Who did this and why? And what does it mean for future disruptions of its kind that could affect all of us here on Earth?
This summer we are revisiting some of our favorite World Ocean Radio episodes that highlight optimism for the ocean. In this episode we highlight The Catalogue of Life, an online database of the world's known species of animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms. It holds the essential information on the names, relationships and distributions of over 1.8 million species worldwide, helping to address the concerns of sustainability and biodiversity on our fast-changing planet.
This summer we are revisiting some of our favorite World Ocean episodes that highlight optimism in ocean news, science and advocacy. In this episode we're talking about the history of oysters, New York Harbor, and the Harbor School—an innovative high school on Governor’s Island in New York City, highlighting their Billion Oyster Project, designed to revive the defunct oyster populations through an ambitious goal of restoring no less than one billion oysters to New York harbor. Harbor School's restorative ecosystem service activities are reconnecting the harbor to the 30 million people living within its vast urban watershed.
This week we're discussing the Sargasso Sea: a verdant, vital ecosystem supporting a great diversity of life, providing shelter for marine mammals, and serving as a repository for human endeavor, including shipping, fishing, harvesting, and pollution. And we're discussing conservation efforts including the Hamilton Declaration and the formation of the Sargasso Sea Commission, protection measures working toward the establishment of an International Marine Protected Area.
In this episode, part thirty-seven of the multi-part BLUEprint series, we continue to discuss the take-aways from the recently published 2nd United Nations World Ocean Assessment, a report that looks at the social, environmental, demographic and economic trends, as well as a review of the integrated sustainable management of coasts and oceans as driven by science, technology and innovation. In this episode we look at the report through the lens of ecosystem service analysis, the ways in which we view and value Nature, and some examples of projects globally that are based ecosystem service accounting that are preserving places and biodiversity.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part thirty-five of the multi-part BLUEprint series. This week, as part of our focus on new approaches and ideas to simplify our strategies for living sustainably on earth, we are continuing our discussion of the ocean genome with an outline of the global protections required if we are to equitably protect natural resources derived from the ocean.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part thirty-four of the multi-part BLUEprint series. This week, as part of our focus on new approaches and ideas to simplify our strategies for living sustainably on earth, we are continuing our discussion of the ocean genome as well as the commercial interests, applications and marine drug and health discoveries made and yet to be discovered. We also warn that marine protected areas remain vulnerable to limited enforcement and over-exploitation of their natural resources.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part thirty-three of the multi-part BLUEprint series. This week, as part of our focus on new approaches and ideas to simplify our strategies for living sustainably on earth, we discuss RNA, DNA, the concept of the genome as an encyclopedic catalog for Nature as a way to provide guidance and explanations for how life works, and the various implications of eDNA on the ocean.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part four of a multi-part series entitled "BLUEprint: How the Ocean Will Save Civilization". In this episode--Ecology, Ocean and Equity--we share findings from the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy and assert that the sum of an equation of ecology to ocean to equity is the total of inclusion, connection, and justice. The BLUEprint series outlines a new and sustainable way forward for civilization, with the ocean leading the way.
This week on World Ocean Radio we discuss the Sargasso Sea--a verdant, vital ecosystem that supports a great diversity of life, provides shelter for marine mammals, and serves as a repository for much of the spoils of human endeavor: shipping, fishing, harvesting, and pollution. And we discuss conservation efforts including the Hamilton Declaration and the formation of the Sargasso Sea Commission, protection measures working toward the establishment of an International Marine Protected Area.
Food webs describe who eats whom in an ecological community. In the aquatic food web, humans feed down the food chain, consuming lesser and lesser ocean predators and marine species without a consciousness of the consequences of our actions at the microscopic level. How do we persuade listeners to adopt a different perspective? How do we articulate an optimistic and realistic way of looking at who we are in relation to all the elements of the natural world? In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill suggests we look at the food chain from the bottom up, and ascribe value to the base elements and fundamentals of ocean life so that all life may thrive and provide and endure.
The Catalogue of Life is an online database of the world's known species of animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms. It holds the essential information on the names, relationships and distributions of over 1.8 million species worldwide. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the importance of such indices to help address the concerns of sustainability and biodiversity on our fast-changing planet. And we argue that, in addition to the collection of data, we must all put this knowledge to use for the future of the ocean and of all living things.
