As the World Ocean Council (WOC) gears up to host its annual Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS) in Halifax, Canada from 29 November to 1 December 2017, we take a look at a few of the key topics that were covered at the previous event in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from 30 November to 2 December 2016.
Over the three days, speakers including CEOs from the Ocean Business Community and Erik Solheim, director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) explored a range of cross-sector topics, strategies and solutions through workshops, plenary and parallel sessions. The main theme of the event was “Ocean 2030: Sustainable Development Goals and the Ocean Business Community”.
The SOS is the only international ocean business event to provide a global review of ocean economic activity for all the principle areas of ocean industrial activity – and to link this analysis to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The conference gathered ocean industry leaders and international experts, who discussed the key ocean sustainable development topics affecting the future of responsible ocean business.
One major topic was the significance of aquaculture and growing alternative fisheries to establish food security. Other discussions focused on the need to collect a larger volume of data regarding the ocean and its wildlife to gain a fuller understanding of the impact of shipping. It was agreed that biggest challenge in assessing the current state of the oceans is the quantity of data necessary to have a good overview of the global ocean ecosystems’ situation.
The discussions also centred on the latest fuel trends and the sustainable aspects of each fuel type. Experts talked about exploring new raw materials such as minerals, and associated practices like deep-sea mining. The renewable energies issued from the ocean such as offshore wind and tidal energy were also highlighted during many panel sessions.
Delegates concluded that cross-sector cooperation is a central component for fostering sustainable oceans, and that passenger shipping and other ocean industries need to explore how they can work together to maintaining the seas.