An IOLN Member perspective – Top 5 Takeaways from the UN Ocean Decade Conference 2024

The UNESCO Ocean Decade Conference 2024 took place in Barcelona between the 10^th and 12^th of April. For two days before the event started, a series of satellite events also took place across the city. Several Irish Ocean Literacy Network members attended the event, which included talks, workshops, cultural events and posters.

We asked some of our members who attended if they could give us their Top 5 Takeaways from the UN Ocean Decade Conference, so that we could hear from people who attended different events and satellite events and from different perspectives. We hope you enjoy it.

Noirin Burke: Director of Education at Galway Atlantaquaria and Director of the IOLN

1. The UNESCO Ocean Literacy Dialogues once again showcased how peer to peer learning and group discussions can help shape our understanding of Ocean Literacy, as a tool to education to empower, regenerate and innovate. As Mr. Vidar Helgesen, Executive Secretary of IOC UNESCO noted on the opening of Day 2 ‘We need a societal approach’. Personally, I would love to see an Irish Ocean Literacy Dialogue in 2025.
2. Jen McRuer from the Ocean Literacy Research Community spoke about the importance of social connections and public perception. They launched a new website and invited new members from around the world to join them and help work towards a united global Ocean Literacy Survey. This sounds like an excellent idea to me.
3. The Ocean Decade White Papers (version 1) were launched at the conference and Diz Glithero (COLC) and Nicola Bridge (Ocean Conservation Trust) provided an inspired summary of the work and outcomes so far for Challenge 10, changing Humanity’s relationship with the Ocean.  They questioned are we all working to the same goal, what is the shared ambition? And what is achievable, in our vision for 2023. The white papers can be found here.
4. At an evening event I had the pleasure of hearing the work of Empatheatre and a media piece they created with One Ocean. As we listened and watched Indlela Yokuphila – The Souls Journey, I was once again reminded how art,music and creativity can break down barriers in language and engage and inspire the human spirit and mind.
5. I only attended the side events, which were excellent, but I was struck once again about the pool we tend to reside in. By that I mean that often it is the same people who attended these events. While there were lots of new faces for me this time, alongside old friends and colleagues, who I was delighted to meet again, I feel we often tend to stick with the people we know, staying inside our own little shoals. There is often little time given to mixing it up! And I don’t even mean networking here, which to me is when we identify people we want to connect with and go find them out! But what about chance encounters? The new person we met by accident. Also, many people still feel off limits, like they are in another ocean, and like a thermocline, it feels like our paths are not destined to mix. And that was just within the conference and side events! This makes me think about how the public feel. How far away from their realities and everyday lives it all must be. As we walked around Barcelona that week there was very little evidence that there was an ocean conference on, and while people had flown in from all over the world to attend (crying thinking of all the air miles), there was very little engagement with civil society from what I could see. But hopefully I am wrong. For me the stranger I met was Lysa Wini, Solomon Islands Coordinator, who I was delighted to meet by accident, but feel like we were both from the same big ocean.

Lucy Hunt – Senior Advisor, The Ocean Race, Found of Sea Synergy, Co. Kerry

1. Ocean Literacy is being discussed a lot more and is seen as a priority for governments, organisations and all entities when it comes to conserving and looking after the ocean and the grand challenges we are faced with. This is great news as there is now more focus on how we create better OL or understand our relationship with the ocean more and how we enhance people’s relationship with the ocean and awareness of its importance in our lives and how that can help us mitigate and take action for the grand challenges we are facing. For someone who has worked in OL for over 15 years this is super news!
2. Co-design is key; projects working for coastal communities and increased resilience. We cannot expect ‘helicopter science and projects’ to work anymore or to bring people with us. We need to engage all levels and ask for local expertise and wisdom and make sure that this contribution is compensated accordingly for the time given to the projects. Indigenous wisdom and communities must be included in strategy, project planning and future fore sighting.
3. There is always room to improve. Environmental conferences and large events can do much better in sustainable event excellence. With only one water refill station and boxed lunches & water (!) for all the 1500 delegates attending each day of the conference there was much avoidable waste and resources used. Explore the topic of fast food packaging here.
4. Many of the ocean issues are shared human problems all around the world. Listening to coastal communities in Africa or the Caribbean we too have similar problems in Ireland. Sharing stories is super important in order to generate shared solutions, like nature based solutions that can be used to enhance the blue economy and help mitigate against climate change or coastal erosion.
5. Reconnecting with the ocean community is super invigorating, enlightening and much needed, many of us work from home, see people for months behind their screens and collaborate from afar to do the good work. Meeting people working for the same cause helps reignite the passion we all have for the ocean, enables important interregional collaborations and commitments to be made,  gives us hope, and builds friendships for life. Also reconnecting with the ocean during these events is essential, we are in conference and meeting rooms for hours and days on end working for the ocean, reconnecting with the ocean wherever we are in person or mind helps power the work we do giving us our Blue mind. I was very grateful for my Water break provided by Seatrees & Protect Blue.

David Whyte – Postdoctoral Researcher MaREI UCC

1. There is a stunning amount and variety of innovative work going on around the world to tackle the challenges of improving ocean and coastal community health. The wealth of projects and initiatives is great to see.
2. However, there seems to be a bit of a gap between solution provision and implementing at scale to reach targets within the timelines that we are told are necessary. More take up, more political and social buy in, more linking of solutions to where they are needed is required.
3. Global Frameworks like the UN Ocean Decade and Mission Ocean are acting as good, shared missions. Given the breath of work, size of the challenges, and global scale, organising this shared effort under an understandable, shared mission is a nice way to join all of this up and create a community around the efforts. 
4. The language around co-design and the role of communities and non-specialists in protecting and restoring waters and biodiversity, and the need for science to deliver for communities is becoming really strong. This was apparent in panels and speeches at all levels around the conference. Great to see and we must make sure that this is backed up by action – deliberative processes and co-owned/co-managed ecosystems, renewable energy systems, MPAs, etc are needed globally.
5. More effort at diversity at higher levels in these and similar conferences is needed. Among participants, diversity in terms of race, location, was very apparent. Gender split was at least 50-50 but probably favoured female participants. However, as the panels became higher and higher level (e.g. the political panels and speeches), this diversity disappeared – white men or men were much more heavily represented. This is not just an issue in the ocean sustainability sector but demonstrates the persistence of patriarchy and western dominance. These events can help by making efforts to ensure diversity remains apparent in all aspects of the conference. More effort could also be made to give community members – non-academic, non-policymakers, non-industry – a real benefit from attending, getting involved in these discussions and joining the community making such a great effort to protect and restore our waters!

Majbritt Bolton-Warberg: Blue Economy Programme Manager at Marine Institute

1. Ireland recognised in an opening address by Audrey Azoulay (Director General of UNESCO) for our commitment to Small Island Development States (via Our Shared Ocean programme administered by the Marine Institute). This highlighted for me what impact we, as a small nation but large oceanic state, can have in an international context.
2. The importance of co-design and engaging with local communities, respecting indigenous knowledge, and knowledge systems really resonated with me. Moving beyond just cursory exchanges, building trust and understanding community priorities for marine resources is vital to reach our shared goals for our oceans. There were several very moving interventions by Pacific islanders that drove these messages home.
3. There was a lot of talk about what is needed and the importance of action BUT scaling up and implementing solutions is still lagging. As Elvis said ‘a little less conversation, a little more action please’ – though I’m fairly sure he wasn’t talking about mitigating measures for climate change!
4. While this was one of the more diverse conferences I’ve been to, there is still work to be done regarding inclusivity, including under-representation of Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOPs) across sessions, and women in higher level panels or keynotes.

Maria Vittoria Marra: Secretariat of the Irish Ocean Literacy Network

1. My first take-away definitely comes from my experience as co-organiser of the satellite event ‘Diving from local to global Ocean Literacy. Exploring, sharing, and developing successful practices to know, feel and join the living Ocean’. It was a first for me to be involved in the organisation of a satellite event, and representing the leading partner felt at the same time like a huge honour, opportunity and responsibility. The event showcased a number of fantastic stories of how ocean literacy can be successfully applied outside formal education settings to increase the connection between people and the ocean from a local to a global scale, and it was very well received from the audience. However, the real success of it for me was the opportunity to design and put together this event with so many wonderful practitioners from so many different countries: we met online several times over the three months leading to the conference, and it really felt like seeing friends when we finally met in person!!!
2. On this note, I deeply appreciated the opportunity the conference gave me to meet in person colleagues from abroad who I had never met in person before, or I had the chance to get to know them better. In all cases I felt it was a really special connection that it gets even deeper in a context like this, when we are all immersed in challenging discussions about the role we can play to create real change as individual researchers and practitioners as well as part of collectives of various sorts, with all the sleep-depriving emotions this entails!
3. However, on the other side of this coin, I agree with Noirin’s point about the ‘bubble’ dimension that this type of experiences involve: during the conference I often had the feeling that such a massive event preaches to the choir in the same way as much smaller and specific conferences would do. It might have been me missing out on something, but I haven’t really noticed any effort to involve the city of Barcelona in the conference, besides having speeches from a number of Catalan political representatives (in Catalan, which felt political more than anything else), as well as, from the other side, a total lack of signs in the city that this event was happening, even nearby the conference venue. I suppose in a big city, with so many great events going on, it might not be surprising, but given the ambitions of the Ocean Decade I believe this is a sign of the fact that the gap between (ocean, in this case)science and society is still quite a long way off to be filled.
4. Even though I consider myself blessed for my own experience as a satellite event organiser because I could rely on the help of a very friendly and responsive support team at the event venue, I felt like the organisation of the whole conference was really rushed, with only three months for such a massive event to be organised. Certainly, the overall experience was very good in the end, but many aspects of the organisations most likely could have been smoothed if more time was dedicated to make the conference more sustainable and accessible for both people who were accepted to take part in it and not (thinking here of colleagues who had to give up on taking part in the Ocean Week because of the delays with their travel arrangements).
5. I probably was very tired after the satellite event, therefore not able to absorb fully the discussions held during the conference, but mainly two moments of it stayed with me:
   • The launch of the Ocean Panel Blue Paper ‘How can a healthy ocean improve human health and enhance wellbeing on a rapidly changing planet?’, which mainstreamed the inextricable relationship between ocean health and human health: it was great to see this topic brought to this high level attention, considering the role I believe it can play to increase societal awareness of the crucial influence the ocean has on our wellbeing, and so foster ocean action. 
   • The whole plenary discussion for Challenge 10. After hearing many times throughout the conference that we have the solutions to face the challenges of our times, but we still don’t know how to implement them, It was absolutely moving on Friday morning to hear iterated that ‘love’ is the solution, because that is what ultimately is really needed to create change. I do hope the big personalities who gave official speeches at the opening and closing of the conference felt deeply the emotions inspired by the indigenous people who expressed with storytelling, poetry, songs and music the profound love they have for their land. I certainly did, and I believe even more now that, wherever we come from and end up being, creating connections with the community we become part of is paramount for the ocean we want!

How can you get involved?

Watch a recording of two of the satellite events co-hosted by IOLN members:

Diving from local to global Ocean Literacy

Empowering science, policy and society through co-design for sustainable ocean development

Take part in the UNESCO Survey on Ocean Literacy Priorities:

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, in collaboration with the Government of Italy, the Municipality of Venice, and the Prada Group, will host the Ocean Literacy World Conference on June 7-8 in the city of Venice, Italy. This Conference will bring together international experts in ocean literacy and ocean education across various sectors.

The Conference marks a significant milestone in the preparatory process for the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) that will be co-hosted by the Governments of France and Costa Rica in Nice, France, on June 9-13, 2025.

UNESCO have shared a survey, so that everyone can contribute to the Venice Declaration. You can support your feedback here. Feel free to respond in the language you are most comfortable with!