Ocean challenges, Policy and global governance: the role of the world’s Marine Stations

The Ocean is increasingly impacted by multiple pressures at a range of scales from local to global. In order to address these global scale challenges and ensure society can realise the potential of an ocean economy projected to reach $5.1 trillion by 2050 the ocean policy landscape continues to change rapidly. The UN Ocean Decade is now focusing on delivering solutions and there are a multitude of global commitments on climate, biodiversity, and sustainable ocean economies. Turning these ambitions into effective action and policy requires credible, sustained and place-based evidence that can be adopted across multiple states. In this talk, I discuss how marine station networks are uniquely positioned to support this goal. Beyond their role as research facilities, they offer long-term observations and institutional memory, detect environmental change, support education and public engagement, and connect global priorities with local realities. Yet a persistent gap remains between the production of scientific knowledge and its uptake in policy. What policymakers need from the scientific community and how marine stations can package and communicate their knowledge more effectively for decision-making remains challenging. A global marine station network will depend on strong local nodes, with every marine station having the potential to make a difference by connecting its research, observations and knowledge to policy decisions and action.I will show how Marine Stations benefit both the communities in which they are based as well as being nodes in a wide range of global governance and policy networks - discussing tangible outcomes and actions from this activity.