Ocean Governance for Sustainability – Challenges, Options and the Role of Science

Marine Biology Station Piran, Nacional Institute of Biology is organizing the Working Group Meeting of the COST Action OceanGov  from 7th till 8th March 2019 in Piran, Slovenia

Ocean Governance for Sustainability – Challenges, Options and the Role of Science

The European funded COST Action OceanGov (Ocean Governance for Sustainability – Challenges, Options and the Role of Science) brings together 28 COST Member States and is coordinated by the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), chaired by Anna-Katharina Hornidge. Thematically the network concentrates on the following six governance challenges: Land-Sea Interactions, Area-Based Management, Seabed Resource Management, Nutrition Security and Food Systems, Ocean, Climate Change, and Acidification, Fisheries Governance. Within these six fields, existing scientific research on different scale levels, regions and sustainability challenges is systematically being brought together and prepared in form of integrated advice on governance tools and mechanisms to improve ocean related decision-making.

Working group 5 is thematically focused on Ocean, Climate Change and Acidification. The increase of greenhouse gas emissions, most notably CO2, has major impacts on the ocean, which will intensify in the coming decades warming, acidification, and sea level rise. These impacts add to the threats posed by the diversification and intensification of human activities which have placed the ocean on an unsustainable pathway. Food security, livelihoods and the living conditions of billions of people are therefore at risk, posing significant challenges for the scientific community that has to inform decision-making processes with proposals that could likely “avoid the unmanageable” and “manage the unavoidable.” Against this background, this working group aims at discussing these key challenges by highlighting options for mitigating the effects of climate change and acidification on the ocean, and adapting to their impacts.

A two day meeting of the working group is organized at the National Institute of Biology, Marine Biology Station in Piran, Slovenia 7 – 8 March 2019. The main focus of the meeting is the discussion/review of the existing and new publications and new suggestions of the group's activities. Additionally two invited lectures will be performed:

Dr. Nives Ogrinc (Institute J Stefan, Ljubljana, Slovenia): Stable isotopes in the study of the impact of increasing CO2 levels on C cycling in coastal waters in the northern Adriatic sea

Dr. Nina Bednaršek (SCCWRP - Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, USA): The effects of OA on marine calcifiers

The meeting is organized by Dr. Valentina Turk and Dr. Alenka Malej, together with working group coordinator Dr. Roberta Guerra (Università di Bologna).