by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Oct 30, 2025 | Past Webinars, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Thursday, October 30, 2025. Presented by: Catarina Frazão Santos of the University of Lisbon and Tundi Agardy of Sound Seas. Description: Marine spatial planning (MSP) and marine protected area (MPA) planning are two distinct area-based processes used worldwide to support sustainable ocean use and conservation. While MSP and MPA planning share similarities, they target different goals and objectives, and use different methodologies, tools, and practitioner skillsets. In this seminar we present our view of the differences and why they matter, emphasizing that using both can maximally advance conservation, especially in the face of climate change. We discuss how the conflation of MSP with MPA planning can create or fortify siloes, impeding holistic and effective management and lessening chances for broad support for conservation and sustainable use. As the world moves to incorporate climate change considerations into planning, the lack of clarity around these distinct approaches can lead to further confusion and limits our pathways to sustainable solutions. To avoid this, we encourage dialogue about scope and objectives of the tools used in planning and provide some lessons for practitioners to adopt ‘climate-smart’ approaches in MSP and MPA planning practices, optimizing synergies between the two wherever possible. We speak to several different ways to promote such synergies and build on progress being made in each arena, including how in certain circumstances OECM planning could bridge MPA planning and MSP and how climate-smart MSP in Antarctica could catalyze both conservation and sustainable use.
by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Oct 24, 2025 | Past Webinars, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Tuesday, October 28, 2025. Presented by: Nathan Bennett of WWF and the IUCN People and Ocean Specialist Group; Mark Andrachuk of Reconnect Consulting; Stacy Jupiter of the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Laure Katz of the Blue Nature Alliance. Description: To date, there has been substantial work on effectiveness of marine conservation initiatives. However, there has been less attention to how to evaluate and improve equity – and there is a lack of clear guidance that is specific for marine conservation interventions, including MPAs, OECMs, LMMAs. To help fill this gap, an international group of conservation researchers and practitioners collaboratively developed and tested several approaches for assessing social equity in marine conservation. In this webinar, we will present the resultant International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) “Guidebook for Assessing and Improving Social Equity in Marine Conservation”. During the webinar we will provide an overview of the main elements of the guidebook and the rapid, stakeholder, and customized assessment approaches that it contains. This will be followed by a panel discussion on where and how these might be used. The guide and webinar will be of interest to managers, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government at different levels.
by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Oct 16, 2025 | Past Webinars, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Wednesday, October 15, 2025. Presented by: Emily Ogier of the University of Tasmania. Description: Novel marine-climate interventions – such as ocean alkalinity enhancement, assisted evolution of marine species, assisted migration of marine species, regrowing targeted species, restoring habitat, and aquaculture for carbon sequestration – are being rapidly implemented to address both the causes and consequences of warming oceans. A recent survey revealed five types and 17 sub-types of interventions proposed or deployed in 37 marine systems globally. There is low consensus in climate goals being pursued by these interventions, however, and there is limited assessment and management of the broader ecological, cultural and social risks and benefits. This webinar will present the types of novel interventions being developed or deployed, their geographic distribution and stage of development (i.e., pilot or full deployment at regional scale), types of climate goals and benefits pursued, and current arrangements (if any) for responsible governance. Recommendations for responsibly governing these interventions at both pilot and upscaled deployment – such as robust evaluation of opportunity cost of alternative actions, bioethical and cumulative impact assessment at pilot scales, and building in triggers for downscaling or exits based on community monitoring – will also be discussed.
by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Sep 16, 2025 | Past Webinars, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Tuesday, September 16, 2025. Presented by: Laura Perry of Castlerock Conservation and the IUCN SSC CEC Behavior Change Task Force. Description: Conservation behavior change is a nascent discipline, but one which has great applicability to many of today’s conservation challenges. By using lessons drawn from social psychology, behavioral economics, and healthcare interventions, this approach has huge potential to shape human behavior and ultimately secure conservation outcomes. In this talk, we will explore the fundamentals of behavior change and how an array of techniques can be used to change human behavior. Touching on examples from across conservation, we will discuss how these approaches can add value to a conservation program, how practitioners can go about involving behavior change in their work, and the relevance of behavior change approaches to conservation translocations.
by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Sep 4, 2025 | Past Webinars, Uncategorized, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Thursday, September 4, 2025. Panelists and moderator include: Alex Hearn, Professor and Researcher at the University of San Francisco de Quito and the Galapagos Science Center; Nai’a Lewis, Director of Big Ocean and Founder and CEO of Salted Logic; Kerry Sink, Marine Program Manager and Principal Scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute; Alan White, President of the Board of the Coastal Conservation and Educational Foundation (Philippines); Lauren Wenzel, MPA Advisor for the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (moderator). Description: Opposition from fishing communities and industries, shifts in government support, funding crises, misinformation and counternarrative campaigns, political instability, natural disasters… Challenges like these can emerge at any stage of an MPA’s development – from planning to long-term implementation – and threaten to derail the MPA’s progress towards achieving its goals. This webinar will discuss ways that MPAs can persevere through adversity, and the factors and strategies that enable MPAs to be durable and make headway toward their missions despite headwinds. Our panelists will speak to their experiences working through MPA processes with communities and industries, designing and redesigning MPAs, and generally ensuring MPA effectiveness. We also encourage webinar participants to share relevant experiences, insights, expertise, and resources during the webinar via the webinar chat. Questions for discussion with the panelists and other participants can be sent in advance of the webinar to sarah@octogroup.org.
by Sarah Carr, Ph.D. | Aug 21, 2025 | Past Webinars, Webinars
This webinar originally aired on Thursday, August 21, 2025. Presented by: Eric Teller and Christian Thomas of SkyTruth. Description: SkyTruth is working to make the hidden crisis of chronic, repeat oil pollution in the world’s ocean visible, measurable, and actionable. Cerulean, the world’s first free, global oil pollution detection platform, has made great strides since its 2023 beta launch. With increasingly advanced AI and more data at its disposal, the world is closer than ever to reliably detecting intentional oil pollution events from both vessels and oil and gas infrastructure, and to holding those polluters accountable. In April, SkyTruth published the names and locations of the world’s most polluting offshore oil and gas infrastructure, enabled by significant improvements to Cerulean’s source detection algorithm. Now, Cerulean includes new features like dark vessel source identification and source profiles that enable users to access more information than ever before about marine oil slicks and their likely sources. These new insights and tools are being used by advocacy organizations, government agencies, journalists, and more to address this persistent form of pollution.
