From March 6-8, WIPCAD doctoral researcher Jennifer Bansard participated in the first content-focused conference of the new EU COST Action ‘Ocean Governance for Sustainability – Challenges, Options and the Role of Science’. The conference was hosted by the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen (Germany).
The OceanGov project builds on a transdisciplinary network of members from 24 EU countries and has three main objectives: to assess priority issues that affect the governance of oceans and coastlines; to map and analyze the current institutional governance architecture in its fragmented and sustainability-challenged form; and to develop governance theoretical and empirical evidence to enhance ocean sustainability by improving ocean related decision-making.
Jennifer was part of a panel focused on ‘Ocean, Climate Change, and Acidification’ and held a presentation titled “Coastal carbon & the spanning of silos”. She first illuminated the relevance of coastal ecosystems for various scientific and policy communities (e.g. biodiversity, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, fisheries), before turning to the issue of coastal carbon, which refers to the greenhouse gas sequestration potential of coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass and salt marshes. Jennifer demonstrated that coastal carbon has been receiving increased attention over the last few years, within academia and by various types of actors, incl. international organizations and the media. She concluded her presentation with a reflection on the potential for coastal carbon to revitalize the conservation of these ecosystems.
In the same panel, Wenting Chen(Norwegian Institute for Water Research) presented a case study on kelp forests in Norway, Troels Jacob Hegland(Aalborg University) talked about industry perspectives on the management of the invasive Pacific oyster in Denmark, and Rachel Tiller(Norwegian University of Science and Technology) shared findings on the adaptive capacity of fishers in relation to climate change impacts.