United Nations World Ocean Assessment

The UN’s World Ocean Assessment is a report outlining the state of the world’s oceans – including environmental, economic, and social aspects. It’s an important tool to enhance the scientific basis for policy-making. The process for creating this assessment involves hundreds of scientists from many countries across the globe, contributing their knowledge and expertise – one of those experts is SOSA’s own Prof. Dr. Julia Sigwart!

This past week, Julia participated in a workshop, hosted in Seychelles, as part of a pool of experts whose ideas and marine expertise will be used in writing the third World Ocean Assessment. Their discussions focused around two topics: (1) the pressures human activities place on the ocean and pathways to making these activities sustainable and inclusive and (2) the interconnectedness of ocean health with the health of marine species and humans and the role of equity, gender and Indigenous/local knowledge within ocean health.

Information on and links to the first two World Ocean Assessments can be found here: https://www.un.org/regularprocess/content/woa