Webinars

This webinar originally aired on Thursday, March 2, 2023. Presented by: Ben Halpern of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Description: Feeding humanity puts enormous environmental pressure on our planet. These pressures are unequally distributed, yet we have piecemeal knowledge of how they accumulate across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial systems. This webinar will present global geospatial analyses detailing greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, habitat disturbance and nutrient pollution generated by 99% of total reported production of aquatic and terrestrial foods in 2017. These results have also been rescaled and combined to map the estimated cumulative pressure, or ‘footprint’, of food production. On land, five countries contribute nearly half of food’s cumulative footprint, and just 10% of the planet contributes 93% of this footprint. The pressures that drive these footprints vary substantially by food and country. Importantly, the cumulative pressure per unit of food production (efficiency) varies spatially for each food type such that rankings of foods by efficiency differ sharply among countries. These disparities provide the foundation for efforts to steer consumption towards lower-impact foods and ultimately the system-wide restructuring essential for sustainably feeding humanity.

This webinar originally aired on Thursday, February 23, 2023. Presented by: Katie Lebling of World Resources Institute. Description: The ocean is already a major carbon sink and plays a crucial role in global climate regulation. At the same time, as the urgency of the climate crisis worsens, attention is turning to the ocean for its potential to play an even bigger role in addressing this. Part of this could be through ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which is receiving increasing attention and investment. However, most approaches are still in the early stages of development, have a high degree of uncertainty about their efficacy and impacts, and lack sufficient governance to ensure responsible deployment.

This webinar will present key findings from a recent WRI report on ocean CDR, including a summary of prominent ocean CDR approaches (coastal blue carbon restoration, seaweed cultivation, ocean fertilization, alkalinity enhancement, electrochemical approaches, artificial upwelling, and artificial downwelling), an overview of the governance landscape, and recommendations for a pathway forward that balances the urgent need for emission reductions with a precautionary approach to avoid further harm to ocean systems, ecosystems, and coastal communities.

This webinar originally aired on Tuesday, January 17, 2023. Presented by: Joachim Claudet of the French National Center for Scientific Research. Description: Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly being promoted as an ocean-based climate solution. These claims are controversial, however, because the literature on the climate benefits of MPAs is diffuse and poorly synthesized. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of 22,403 publications spanning 241 MPAs and analyzed these across 16 ecological and social pathways through which MPAs could contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Our meta-analysis found that marine conservation can significantly enhance carbon sequestration, coastal protection, biodiversity, and the reproductive capacity of marine organisms as well as fishers’ catch and income. Most of these benefits are only achieved in fully or highly protected areas and increase with MPA age. This webinar will present these results and discuss the extent to which MPAs can be a useful tool for mitigating climate change and adapting social-ecological systems.

This webinar originally aired on Tuesday, December 13, 2022. Panelists: Julie Angus, CEO of Open Ocean Robotics; Emily Charry Tissier, CEO and Founder of WhaleSeeker; and Anna Sanders, Product Development Director for Global Fishing Watch. Description: Existing and emerging ocean technology have tremendous potential for helping global MPAs address critical management needs. In this webinar, experts from three leading ocean technology organizations – Open Ocean Robotics, Whale Seeeker, and Global Fishing Watch – will share how their technology products can help MPAs and address questions from webinar participants. In addition, webinar participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences with ocean tech for MPA management via the webinar chat, enabling knowledge and experience sharing across global MPAs.

This webinar originally aired on Thursday, December 1, 2022. Presented by: Carolyn Kousky of the Environmental Defense Fund. Description: The frequency and intensity of natural disasters—such as hurricanes, floods, and storms—are on the rise, threatening our way of life and our livelihoods. Insurance, an often confusing and unpopular tool, is critical to recovery from these crises. Yet, as it becomes ever more essential, insurance markets are under stress, many are uninsured, and insurance often seems divorced from efforts to improve the resilience and sustainability of our communities. How can we improve insurance to provide consistent and sufficient help following all disasters? How do we use insurance not just to help us recover, but also to help us prevent disasters in the first place? And how can insurance help us achieve broader social and environmental goals? Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at the Environmental Defense Fund and author of Understanding Disaster Insurance, Carolyn Kousky, will present on why traditional insurance markets fall short in meeting the needs of a world coping with climate change and how new insurance and risk transfer markets can help create thriving and resilient coastal communities and ecosystems.

This webinar originally aired on November 16, 2022. Presented by: Steven Mana‘oakamai Johnson of Cornell University. A fundamental challenge in ocean conservation is translating the results of climate models into forms that managers and others can use to plan for the future. Using techniques from information theory, the Ocean Novelty (ONo) Index provides a simple and intuitive way to understand how climate change will alter key ocean biogeochemical variables. This measure can help MPA managers know what they need to prioritize in their planning and design policies and regulations that help their MPA keep pace with expected shifts in the ecosystem state. This webinar will share how the ONo Index is calculated and walk through an application for large MPAs.

This webinar originally aired on November 2, 2022. Presented by: Matt Simon of Wired magazine. Description: Matt Simon, science journalist at Wired magazine, has published the first book to fully explore the threat of microplastics. Publishers Weekly describes the book as a “lucid, distressing look at a growing environmental concern.” In this webinar, Simon will share how the study of microplastics began in the sea but has now moved to land, the atmosphere, and human health. This presentation will give a brief overview of the current science of microplastics and the scientists who travel to the ends of the earth and the bottom of the ocean to understand plastic pollution.

This webinar originally aired on Tuesday, October 4, 2022. Presented by: Chris Clapp of The Ocean Sewage Alliance. Description: Roughly 80% or more of the world’s sewage enters the oceans completely untreated or poorly treated, stressing many ecosystems to the point of collapse. This challenge goes largely unnoticed until a crisis happens – a fishery is lost, beaches get closed, or, worse, people get seriously ill. The Ocean Sewage Alliance was formed to break the silence about ocean sewage pollution and bring a sense of urgency to public discourse on the issue. We do so by simultaneously raising awareness about the problem and highlighting the many opportunities that arise from addressing sewage pollution – opportunities in the form of resource recovery, job creation, and risk avoidance.

This webinar originally aired on Wednesday, July 13, 2022. Presented by: Sari Tolvanen of Ocean Eye. Description: Global studies have shown that stakeholder buy-in is the number one success factor in marine conservation, but too often coastal communities lack incentives to support conservation initiatives. Ocean Eye is a data collection and financial transfer platform that collects wildlife sighting data and transfers ecosystem service payments. The animal sighting reports are directly linked to small payments from tourists that go to coastal communities to incentivize the protection of endangered and vulnerable species. By connecting profit to purpose for the tourism operators and communities, it will shift the focus from the current unsustainable behavior of fisheries and coastal communities towards a sustainable, regenerative, and profitable new focus industry that will provide positive livelihood for the future.