On July 9th, 2021, 1-3 PM UTC, the Networking Friday on the All-Atlantic Pledging Campaign will discuss the existing committed solutions and the way forward to better understand, care and protect our threatened Atlantic ocean. Every day we hear or read about the ever-growing list of threats that our ocean is now facing due mostly by human action or inaction. From global warming and habitat destruction to marine pollution and overfishing, marine ecosystems and biodiversity are severely impacted, so urgent global action is needed to immediately revert current trends and to broadly restore and preserve the ocean’s health for future generations. The All-Atlantic Pledging Campaign is a long-term initiative to collect voluntary, result-oriented, personal or institutional commitments to contribute to provide solutions to the many challenges that the Atlantic Ocean holds for people living on its shores and consolidate them on an Atlantic Ocean scale, always taking into account specific local, national and regional contexts. The campaign is taking place thanks to an online collaborative platform for advancing or initiating cooperation in the Atlantic region aimed at advancing the so called All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance and the implementation of the Galway Statement (2013) and the Belém Statement (2018) as well as the bilateral Administrative Arrangements between the European Commission and Argentina (2018), Cape Verde (2018) and Morocco (2020).
The Pledging Campaign was launched during the All-Atlantic2021 Conference and 32 pledges were submitted as of now.
Under the motto “TIME TO ACT: The Atlantic Ocean needs more than flowing words” institutions and stakeholders from along and across the Atlantic Ocean are committing their research and innovation solutions in response to common challenges to better understand, care and protect our threatened Atlantic Ocean in one the following thematic areas:
- Ocean Health: climate variability and ecosystem approaches
- Ocean Technology
- Ocean observation, forecasting and monitoring
- Marine pollution
- Food security, ocean resources and biodiversity
- Polar research
The All-Atlantic Pledging Campaign has two main objectives:
- Showcase the already ongoing cooperation as an example of the result of science diplomacy efforts (including being a model for the UN Decade of Ocean Science)
- Promote further synergies between ongoing which may lead to future activities.
PROGRAMME
- 1:00 PM UTC – All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance intro, Sofia Cordeiro and Sigi Gruber
- 1:15 PM UTC – All-Atlantic Pledging Campaign intro, José Moutinho
- 1:25 PM UTC – Brief presentations on the submitted pledges
- 2:20 PM UTC – Debate / Q&A moderated by Isabel Sousa Pinto
- 2:50 PM UTC – Wrap up and way forward, Sofia Cordeiro and Sigi Gruber
Register here
