Building equitable partnerships with countries of the Global South, the core of IRD's commitment to ocean sciences

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires equitable scientific partnership and a transdisciplinary, citizen-based approach to science. The French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), which has just celebrated its 80th anniversary,  has built long-term partnerships with over 60 countries in the Global South and overseas territories. Its unique model promotes equitable scientific collaboration, both within and outside the scientific community, based on mutual respect and shared expertise. Regarding ocean sciences, the institute promotes the advancement of scientific research in collaboration with countries from the Global South by encouraging and coordinating research efforts to fill gaps in our understanding of the ocean, marine socio-ecosystems and their interactions with climate.

In collaboration with our partners in the Global South and the Global North, and through a transdisciplinary approach, we are committed to developing “the science we need for the ocean we want”. By aligning ourselves with the Ocean Decade, we are demonstrating our commitment to global initiatives aimed at advancing ocean science, sustainability and conservation through a solid network of partnerships that combine research, knowledge exchange and capacity building of scientists and institutions in the Global South and Overseas territories. The co-construction of these partnerships is based on original complementary and long-term support mechanisms and programmes : Research Grants for PhD in the Global South programme (3 years), Emerging Teams associated with IRD (JEAI, 3 years), International Research Networks (IRN, 8 years), International Joint laboratories (IJL, 10 years). 60% of IRD publications are co-published with our partners in the Global South.

In this way, as part of an interdisciplinary, collaborative and inclusive approach, we are building shared expertise that integrates local constraints and global issues to address the following challenges facing the ocean:

• Understand the role of oceans from global to local scales, including oceanic and coastal socio-ecosystems, in climate variability and global climate change and anticipating the reciprocal impacts of climate variability and global climate change.

 

• Understand the functioning of coastal and marine socio-ecosystems and the complex interactions between the multiple components of these systems, their multi-scale variability and their response to natural and anthropogenic factors in order to reconcile the often contradictory objectives of resource exploitation and biodiversity conservation and to design solutions aimed at ensuring a sustainable and fair trajectory for the ocean.

 

• Study the impact of ocean pollution and provide valuable insight into the sources, consequences and potential mitigation strategies of ocean pollutants.