Ocean Newsletter

No.500 June 5, 2021

  • On Launching the Japan National Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science Vladimir RYABININ
    Executive Secretary, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO
  • Let’s Strengthen the Ties between Ocean Science and Policy YAMAGATA Toshio
    Project Principal Researcher, JAMSTEC / Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo
    Selected Papers No.27
  • Inaugural Address for the New Presidency of Ocean Policy Research Institute SAKAGUCHI Hide
    President, Ocean Policy Research Institute, The Sasakawa Peace Foundation

On Launching the Japan National Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science

The UN Decade of Ocean Science started

Dear colleagues, Professor Atsushi Sunami, Professor Yutaka Michida, dear esteemed representatives of Japanese organizations, ministries, agencies, dear scientists from Japan, I congratulate you on the inauguration of your National Decade Committee for Japan, also the kickoff meeting for the Decade in Japan. And I thank you very much for thinking about me, and inviting me to briefly address you, at the start of your meeting.

We are on the verge of a very important change in ocean science, hopefully also in sustainability. The world would like to live better and the program for that in the United Nations is Agenda 2030. So it was proclaimed in 2015 and in 2016, and I think the very important message was sent to the world, that the ocean is declining in its health and humankind is running out of time to start managing the oceans sustainably. And managing the ocean is a science-intensive task. Our science is not and was not, ready to deliver all the ways of managing the ocean to Coastal Zone Management, to addressing issues related to climate change in terms of adaptation, mitigation. And there are many important developments that we can undertake in the ocean, saving the ocean, using the ocean, if we had science that is up to the challenge.

So that was the motivation for proclaiming the Decade of the United Nations and the proposal of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, and we started to work on this with you. And I would like to thank Dr. Mitsuo Uematsu, the Japanese scientist who was a very important contributor to the Executive Planning Group of the Decade.

We conducted tens of meetings, it was a highly inclusive process with thousands of people, and hundreds of organizations participating. And then we prepared the plan for the Decade that was presented to the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of IOC, and the General Assembly accepted the plan. This happened on the last day of last year. And the Decade was proclaimed starting on the 1st of January 2021 for 10 years. So we are in the Decade now.

Challenges of the Decade

And I would like to say that the plan for the Decade is a living document. Very briefly, we would like to achieve in the course of the decade new qualities of the ocean, new qualities of people. We have seven societal outcomes like a clean, healthy, resilient ocean, also a safe ocean, but also an inspiring and engaging ocean, and you can easily understand that this is about us people. We also have 10 initial challenges of the Decade. These are 10 domains of our initial work.

Let me very briefly present to you the logic.

We would like to have the ocean clean. And if we have the ocean clean, this is a chance for us to make ocean ecosystems healthier. If the ocean ecosystems become healthier, we will be able to generate more food from the ocean. We will be able to generate more wealth from the ocean, developing an ocean economy. This all is going to take place under the conditions of climate change. This means acidification of the ocean, more intensive tropical cyclones, and Japan is suffering from them, and sea level rise. And this is a very intensive area of development in the international negotiation with the Paris agreement that we still need to reach. And because of that, we need to address disasters, you know, and of course we cannot forget, I’m speaking to Japanese, we cannot forget about tsunamis. And you know, in order to address all these challenges, we need to develop an observing system for the ocean.

We need to generate data describing the past, current, and future state of the ocean, also the consequences of our decisions. And with that, I think we'll be able to also generate capacity for ocean science.

Vladimir Ryabinin, Executive Secretary, IOC, UNESCO.Figure: Seven social outcomes and ten key challenges for the Decade.

Expectations for Japan and the World in the Decade

And also for the countries that are not able to cope with the challenges, leaving no one behind. But importantly, is that with new technological data, and also an ethical background, we will be able to change our relation with the ocean by changing human behavior, and that is the vision. So, we, on the 15th of October, issued the first call for action. We received more than 200 different proposals.

You know, you are oceanographers, most of you, and you remember such fantastic projects and programs like the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Study, and the Census of Marine Life. So in the Decade, I think we will have to have maybe dozens of such fantastic projects and change the face of Oceanography. So we will not only, of course, develop fundamental knowledge, which is very important, but also convert the knowledge to solutions about the ocean.

And in order to organize thought, I think we have to have some idea and the idea is that we need now to start managing the ocean. And that was exactly what was agreed by the high level panel for a sustainable ocean economy in which Japan is a member. Only 14 countries now have made the commitment, but this is a very important commitment, by 2025 to start managing the Exclusive Economic Zones sustainably based on plans. I really applaud that development and I think we can call on the rest of the world to start doing so on the basis of science. And with that, I think we can deny the first conclusion of the World Ocean Assessment 2016 that we are running out of time.

We are catching up, and we will be managing the oceans sustainably based on science. And I think with that, I would like to wish you a very successful meeting, very good deliberations. And I know the qualities of Japanese scientists. I think you can do really a big change in the approach to the decade, contribute resources and change the tide towards managing the oceans sustainably, live in harmony with the ocean and make our world better.

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