Ocean sustainability pathways for achieving conflict transformation (OCEANS PACT)

• Grant number: 19/24416-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: August 01, 2020 - July 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Convênio/Acordo: Belmont Forum
• Principal Investigator: Ronaldo Adriano Christofoletti
• Grantee: Ronaldo Adriano Christofoletti
• Principal researcher abroad: Michael Gilek
• Institution abroad: Södertörn University, Sweden
• Host Institution: Instituto do Mar (IMar). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Alexander Turra ; Deborah Santos Prado ; Ivan Machado Martins ; Leandra Regina Gonçalves Torres ; Leopoldo Cavaleri Gerhardinger ; Luciana Yokoyama Xavier ; Melissa Vivacqua Rodrigues ; Nancy Ramacciotti de Oliveira Monteiro ; Pedro Henrique Campello Torres ; Pedro Roberto Jacobi ; Renzo Romano Taddei ; Rodolfo Eduardo Scachetti
• Associated scholarship(s): 20/16028-5 - Conflict transformation approaches to the sustainability pathways at the South, Central and North São Paulo state Marine Environmental Protection Areas - SP MEPAs, BP.PD; 20/16029-1 - Strengthening the next generation of fisher's leaders for promoting small-scale fisheries transformations in Brazil, BP.PD

Abstract

Life on earth depends on healthy oceans. But our oceans are in decline. There is mounting pressure on finite marine resources because of the increasing number of competing activities, technological advances, and over-exploitation, pollution and climate change. Conflicts about how to harness benefits from marine resources are widespread, intensifying, and unfolding in unprecedented ways. There are long-standing disputes between activities like fisheries, and oil and gas exploitation. New conflicts are emerging, e.g., sea-level rise could displace millions on low-lyingcoasts, and submerge some small island nations. Ocean conflicts reflect deep-rooted struggles over ownership, rights, benefits, and human-nature relationships on our Blue Planet. Surprisingly, ocean conflict resolution is an under-developed field of scholarship and practice. OCEANS PACTargues that ocean sustainability prospects depend on building tailor-made capabilities to analyze, productively manage, and where possible transform ocean conflicts. We construct a co-designed, transdisciplinary, action research approach. We aim to develop deep insights about diverseocean conflicts through real-world collaboration of context-specific research teams that include stakeholder partners, social and natural scientists, and conflict resolution experts. Our comparative analysis focuses on conflicts that traverse the Global North and South, in South Africa, India, Brazil, Norway/Barents Sea, Baltic Sea and United States. We investigate how existing conflict resolution practices help or hinder ocean sustainability. We examine how formal interventions, e.g., law, and informal practices, e.g., negotiation, can be harnessed to unlock the transformative potential of conflict resolution. The new knowledge gained will be used to develop and test ocean conflict resolution tools and practices. OCEANS PACT will generate significant scientific, socio-political and practice benefits in our case studies, and enable scaling up of insights, tools and conflict resolution practices that foster global ocean sustainability. (AU)