Webinars
Upcoming Webinars
Recent developments in the sustainable management of marine resources
Tuesday, July 8, 11 am US EDT/8 am US PDT/3 pm UTC/4 pm BST/5 pm CEST. Presented by: Mike Elliott of International Estuarine & Coastal Specialists (IECS) Ltd., and the School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Hull (Emeritus Professor). Description: This webinar will present and explain cause-consequence-response frameworks and the way these relate to managing marine, coastal and estuarine areas. It will then show the importance of determining the footprints of activities, pressures, and natural and human effects and assessing cumulative effects. Following this, it will consider the footprints of management responses and will demonstrate horizontal management across sectors and vertical management from the local to the global and vice versa. It will look at the importance of transboundary implications of marine management, considering connectivity, coherence, and equivalence. Finally, it will consider the way in which success in marine management is measured, including indicators of success. Examples from Europe and North America will be used, but the topics are relevant to marine areas worldwide.
Identifying and Prioritizing a Portfolio of Marine and Coastal Conservation Finance Solutions
Wednesday, August 20, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC. Presenters: David Meyers of the Conservation Finance Alliance, John Bohorquez of the Blue Economy Solutions Lab and the Conservation Finance Alliance, and Jos Hill of the Conservation Finance Alliance Marine & Coastal Working Group. Description: Coastal and marine ecosystem management and governance institutions face a wide array of choices when it comes to conservation finance mechanisms. A new tool provides a systematic method for brainstorming, defining, and prioritizing suitable finance solutions. This approach is rooted in the definition of conservation finance as “mechanisms and strategies that generate, manage, and deploy financial resources and align incentives to achieve nature conservation outcomes.” In most cases, consistent and adequate funding is a critical but insufficient component of a project’s conservation finance portfolio. This approach seeks to take the practitioner through a range of perspectives to generate ideas on how to solve their conservation challenges and respond to opportunities. The idea generation phase is followed by a prioritization approach adapted from the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN). This webinar will walk attendees through the tool approach and its use.
Chronic oil pollution in the world’s ocean: New insights, enhanced tools, and emerging solutions
Thursday, August 21, 11 am US EDT/8 am US PDT/3 pm UTC/4 pm BST/5 pm CEST. 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.
Changing human behavior to secure conservation outcomes
Tuesday, September 16, 10 am US EDT/7 am US PDT/2 pm UTC/3 pm BST/4 pm CEST. 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.
Past Webinars
Never let a good failure go to waste: Learning from conservation failure
This webinar originally aired on 25 January 2022. Presented by: Allison Catalano from work conducted at Imperial College London. How does your organization handle failure? Failure or outcomes that are less than successful are not uncommon in conservation initiatives, yet we rarely discuss failure in systematic ways that make use of the learning opportunities failure presents. Here we will discuss alternate ways to think about failure and the individual and interpersonal dynamics that make it challenging.
Planning for Coastal and Marine Heritage in a Changing Climate
This webinar originally aired on 16 December 2021. Presented by: Erin Seekamp of North Carolina State University. Heritage sites represent our inherited traditions, objects, monuments, and land and seascapes that provide cultural connections and identities as well as societal benefits.
Supporting self-financing mechanisms in MPAs
This webinar originally aired on 17 November 2021. Presented by: Guillaume Le Port and Nastazia Femmami of BlueSeeds. The webinar described two support programs: visitor fees and concession agreements. These programs empower and build MPA staff’s capacity to manage their site or network’s local financing mechanisms over the long term.
MPAs as Part of the Climate Solution: The Role of Blue Carbon
This webinar originally aired on 26 October 2021. Presented by: Sara Hutto of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Well-managed marine protected areas (MPAs) protect valuable blue carbon habitats and processes, and they must be included in global and national mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change.
Turning the tide of parachute science
This webinar originally aired on 21 October 2021. Presented by: Paris Stefanoudis of the University of Oxford and Sheena Talma of the Nekton Foundation. Parachute science is the practice whereby international scientists, typically from higher-income countries, conduct field studies in another country, typically of lower income, and then complete the research in their home country without any further effective communication and engagement with others from that nation.
Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation
This webinar originally aired on 13 October 2021. Presented by: Samuel Brody of the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas at Texas A&M University at Galveston, Carlos Martin with the Brookings Institution’ Metropolitan Policy Program, and Carolyn Kousky of the Wharton Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Sea level rise will cause interrelated challenges in communities around the United States. The issues extend far beyond land use planning to affect housing policy, financing for public infrastructure, insurance, fostering healthier coastal ecosystems, and more.
How to do science so it influences marine policy and management: A panel discussion with a focus on Latin America, Caribbean, and African contexts
This webinar originally aired on 28 September 2021. Moderator/panelists: Peter Edwards of The Pew Charitable Trusts (moderator), Rodrigo Arriagada of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (panelist), Nicole Leotaud of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (panelist), and David Obura of CORDIO East Africa. Many environmental scientists find that their research has less impact in the real world than they hoped for or expected.
Using an incremental approach for “wicked problems” in fisheries management and marine EBM
This webinar originally aired on 16 September 2021. Presented by: Jon Hare of NOAA Fisheries Ecosystem-based management is a ‘wicked problem’, that is, a problem that is…
Behavior Change for Climate Action for the Oceans and Beyond
This webinar originally aired on 26 August 2021. Presented by: Caroly Shumway of the Center for Behavior and Climate. More and more environmental practitioners are incorporating behavior change into their efforts to increase pro-environmental action, building off the success of the medical community in using behavior change to improve health.
Working towards a global plastic pollution treaty: Process and possibilities
This webinar originally aired on 17 August 2021. Presented by: Trisia Farrelly of Massey University. Over 130 countries have declared support for a global agreement to combat marine litter and microplastics. There are numerous processes underway to build momentum towards an ambitious global plastics agreement at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) 5.2 in February 2022.