TM5 | Ocean and Maritime Governance

TM5

Ocean and Maritime Governance

Convener: Brice Trouillet | Co-convener: Sophie Lanco, Pascale Ricard

Tue, 03 Jun, 12:45–13:45 (CEST)|Room 5

A Town Hall on ocean and maritime governance (OMG) is proposed. Governance is an issue that cuts across the entire spectrum of scientific disciplines and interacts closely with the decision-making sphere. It requires ever greater integration of knowledge systems (Theme 1), it implies the use of ocean-based approaches to face challenges of adaptation to climate change (T2), and it relies on healthy coastal and marine ecosystems (T3). Governance is a means to an end, and improving it is a need for all of us, on a global scale. It can only be action-oriented and in favor of a multifaceted ocean literacy (T10). It also must enable us to meet the challenges posed by marine genetic resources (T5), global fisheries (T6) which, among other things, contribute to food systems worldwide (T7), plastic pollution (T8), maritime transport that irrigates economies (T9), and the deep ocean, where knowledge remains critical (T4). Ocean and maritime governance form an ‘assemblage’ of intertwined issues. In other words, this proposed Town Hall on ocean and maritime governance is positioned as a cross-cutting issue.
Reflecting on OMG and grasping the issues at stake means questioning the political practices in the broadest sense that, today or in the past, have jointly shaped the government of human activities at sea and the sometimes-radical transformations of the environment. It also means casting a critical and reflexive light on “governance” itself. Finally, it means enabling and supporting genuine dialogue between the maritime scientific community and all those involved in maritime “governance”.
This Town Hall is structured so as to multiply angles of view and topics, and thus diversify the participants to encourage a multi-level dialogue between science and decision-making. Structuring questions will be proposed to organize the dialogue such as (1) What representations provide disciplinary, thematic and geographical perspectives on governance issues, (2) How does research relates to current and future governance issues? (3) What are the main obstacles to ‘good governance’? Actors, skills, knowledge, temporality, territories, scales, etc.? (4) What is the place of research in/on/linked to governance?
Practically speaking, the session alternates between presentations on specific points (agreed in advance with the participants) and time for discussion and debate between the participants (and as far as possible with the audience).
The objective of the session is to produce a one-pager that summarizes the key points of a cross-cutting research agenda on the understanding of OMG mechanisms, having a real impact on political decision-making. While being attentive to the diversity of situations worldwide, this agenda should help to identify potential bottlenecks and obstacles, and discuss practices and levers to overcome them.