Oceans are ecosystems on which all life depends; kill the oceans and all life is in peril. That’s why Conservation Labs, the World Wildlife Foundation, SecondMuse, and Further have produced the ocean conservation landscaping framework outlining problem sets, grand challenges, sectors, players, design principles, pathways to change, and new innovative products, services, and technologies.
The group is forward-looking in that it is preparing for a world with 9.6 billion human inhabitants. It has run the “Smart Here Competition” to spark development of innovative technology to reduce bycatch, the incidental catch of species of fish that are not a target of fishing expeditions.
The 10 grand challenges for ocean conservation are:
- A blue revolution for oceans: re-engineering aquaculture for sustainability
- Ending and recovering from marine debris
- Transparency and traceability from sea to shore and ending over-fishing
- Protecting critical ocean habitats & new tools for marine protection
- Engineering ecological resilience in nearshore and coastal areas
- Reducing the ecological footprint of fishing through smarter gear
- Arresting the alien invasion & combating invasive species
- Combating the effects of ocean acidification
- Ending marine wildlife trafficking
- Reviving dead zones: combating ocean deoxygenation, dead zones, and nutrient runoff
The full report can be found here.
The following video “Nature is Speaking” is narrated by Harrison Ford.
