Excitement in and around the European Parliament. Droves of primarily young people standing in line to get their entry passes. They were among the 2000+ people registered for the 'Beyond Growth' Conference in the European Parliament, convened in hybrid mode. Only about half could participate in person. How can we all live dignified lives within planetary boundaries, the one planet we must share with organisms on the land, in the ocean and with fellow citizens everywhere?
The terms ‘vulnerability’ and ‘viability’ are usually studied in the context of socio-cultural and political-economic settings. In these cases, they would refer to vulnerability from and viability in challenging external circumstances, such as the consequences encountered by ecosystem-dependent communities in the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh. However, the speed and quality of transition are directly proportional to the psychological constitution, worldviews, and resilience of the individual and their sum total collective.
The beginnings of geoethics about a decade ago initiated by Silvia Peppoloni and Giuseppe Di Capua, geologists from Rome, were rather whimsical. The geoethics work stream at the 2023 Annual Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna has grown into a full day's programme. Mundus maris has repeatedly contributed to this encouraging development both at EGU conferences and in associated books projects. This year there were even several presentations reporting on field work and experiences on how to account for a range of different ways to express knowledge, inside and outside of scientific epistemologies.
Cuando se confirmaron los descubrimientos de gas de 425 mil millones de metros cúbicos en 2015 para las áreas costeras compartidas entre Mauritania y Senegal, esto generó esperanza, como proporcionar electricidad a aproximadamente el 30% de los 18 millones de senegaleses para los que se calcula que no tienen acceso. En ese momento, los pescadores artesanales locales que habían dado dinero a las comunidades de Guet Ndar en St Louis y otras, ya estaban luchando con muchas dificultades, como la erosión costera de sus pueblos y la pérdida de vida en el mar. Sin embargo, lo peor de todo ha sido la competencia de los barcos industriales extranjeros y la pérdida gradual de acceso a los caladeros más productivos a los que se podía acceder con sus botes abiertos, llamados localmente piraguas.
Por invitación del Profesor Madan M. Dey, Presidente del Departamento de Ciencias Agrícolas de la Universidad Estatal de Texas en San Marcos, la Vicepresidenta de Mundus maris, la Profesora Stella Williams, visitó el campus el 13 de abril de 2023. En esta ocasión, impartió una clase a estudiantes de posgrado de la India, Bangladesh y EE.UU. en la que resumió parte de su rica experiencia en investigación, docencia y, de hecho, en la vida, sobre la promoción de las mujeres y los jóvenes en la agricultura y sobre cómo ayudarles a convertirse en líderes, centrándose en Nigeria.
On April 4, the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute (GoGMI), based in Accra, Ghana, welcomed high school students from across the country to a maritime career fair. On offer were free ocean literacy presentations, lots of information about careers and networking opportunities. The students had beforehand participated in a survey to understand their perceptions of ocean careers. GoGMI is a local partner of the Development of Ocean Tecnical Capacity with African Nations (DOTCAN) Institute of Nova Scotia, Canada. It had invited Mundus maris Ghana to enrich the programme with an information booth.
This talk by Foluke Omotayo Areola provided an overview of the major challenges to the sustainability of small-scale fisheries and their governance in Nigeria. It addressed teh gaps in the administration of the legal instruments in the sector and discussed obstacles in the socio-economic development of such artisanal fisheries within the legal structures of Nigeria at federal, State and local levels. The tension between different levels of statutory law and customary law can be considerable. While Nigeria adheres to a large body of international treaties and arrangements many are yet to be domiciled in order to facilitate the transition from vulnerability to viability (V2V). This was the March webinar of the V2V research platform on small-scale fisheries to which Mundus maris is a partner.
¿Sabías que los tiburones mueren en todo el mundo por millones, especialmente por sus aletas? Europa contribuye con un impactante 45% al comercio de aletas de tiburón de los mercados asiáticos, tanto como principal exportador como centro comercial de aletas de tiburón. Pero esto está a punto de cambiar. ¡La iniciativa ciudadana de la UE @StopFinningEU recopiló más de 1,1 millones de firmas para apoyar el establecimiento de una prohibición comercial de aletas de tiburón en Europa! Ahora Europa tiene la oportunidad de demostrar que se está tomando en serio sus obligaciones de conservación.
El Parlamento Europeo celebró una audiencia muy destacada sobre el asunto el 27 de marzo de 2023.
El sábado 4 de marzo de 2023, el Presidente de la Conferencia Intergubernamental sobre Biodiversidad Marina de las Zonas Fuera de la Jurisdicción Nacional (CIG) encargada de elaborar un Acuerdo para proteger la biodiversidad de alta mar declaró: "El barco ha llegado a la orilla". Tras más de 15 años de debates y negociaciones, por fin se ha alcanzado un consenso sobre un Acuerdo para garantizar la conservación y el uso sostenible de la biodiversidad en las zonas marinas situadas fuera de las jurisdicciones nacionales (BBNJ).
The far-reaching agreement at COP15 in December 2022 which led to the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is the successor of the Aichi targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The webinar on 10 March 2023 featured Mr. Basile van Havre, the Co-Chair for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Open-Ended Working Group tasked with the development of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The webinar was hosted hosted by the School of the Environment and the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada) and the Community Conservation Research Network.
The 'Feed the Future - Innovation Lab for Fish' is a USAID supported project based at the Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. It had invited Stella Williams of Mundus maris as a keynote speaker on 27 February 2023 at day one of its last annual project meeting in New Orleans. Fittingly, the day's key programme topics were gender, youth, and advancing human and institutional capacity development.