Episode 1 - Ocean Equity

This podcast was produced on the lands of the Darawol, UN and Wadiwadi peoples of the Five Islands Dreaming. On the lands and waters that we live, study and work, we acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians and cultural knowledge holders of these lands and seas. Hello and welcome to negotiating the ocean. I'm Jennifer Macy, one of the co-hosts of this new podcast from ANCORS, the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong on Australia's East Coast. You might be aware that there are countless meetings going on at any time of the year, if delegates from countries from all over the world talking about the ocean. In this podcast, we're going to talk to you about these international negotiations that govern everything from fishing, deep sea mining to biodiversity. We're going to discuss how pollution and climate change affect our ocean and we're going to talk to people from around the world that are directly involved in these negotiations and who may rely on the ocean for their livelihood. The first, let's meet our co-hosts who attend many of these meetings throughout the year. Hi everyone, I'm Ena and I'm an ocean ex-hosts postdoctoral research fellow here at ANCORS and I work on ocean equity in high seas governance. And hi, I'm Bianca, I'm a research fellow here at ANCORS and I work on all kinds of equity issues related to fisheries, especially tuna fisheries. So each episode, we're going to talk about a different issue or challenge facing the ocean. We will talk about the different ocean negotiations right before the conferences are happening. So we invite experts in each of the episodes to give us some insights into key topics. And hopefully this can also serve as a preparation for those working in these areas ahead of attending these meetings. And in each episode, you'll often hear us talking about this term ocean equity. Exactly, and that term ocean equity includes aspects of social environment with justice, which means for example fairness in the negotiations, fairness for the ocean and for its critters and fairness for those who rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. That also means that the process needs to be inclusive of different voices to make sure that not just the powerful voices are heard, because whether you live by the ocean or far away, the outcomes of the negotiations affect us all. Today's focus is on ocean equity and what it means for some of the people working at the research institute, and cause, because it differs slightly for everyone. And to introduce us to this topic, let's hear from Professor Quinton Hannick, who leads the fisheries governance research programme at and cause. So the ocean equity research programme at Ankers is effectively a collective of researchers who are all interested in different aspects of ocean equity. And we have people who are interested in our of the most, regional fisheries management organisations, people who are interested in marine conservation, BB&J, and you know, different aspects of them at all different levels. We have engagements with the Indian Ocean China Commission, the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission, the Inter-American Tropical China Commission, and the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation. So we basically work internationally at both global levels, like with BB&J, and then at regional levels in the Holy Indo-Pacific mostly. And then our driving premise is to undertake research that has applied benefit. The audience for that research are also the stakeholders. So our research is very much an applied methodology where we're engaging with stakeholders, engaging with institutions, understanding not just the context, but the key challenges and the key needs and gaps. And then we can work to develop research that's directly targeting that, so that it can then provide some outcomes that will help progress towards equity. So here at Ankers, we have researchers working on many different aspects of ocean equity. Fisheries, pollution, deep sea mining, plastics, marine biodiversity. So it's not a surprise that ocean equity means something unique, depending on what you're working on. To me, equity is not just an outcome but a process. You can't expect an equitable outcome if the process is Machiavellian and dictated. It really has to be owned by the people involved in the process. 4 key principles of ocean equity achieving fairness was also about respecting rights, preventing harm, and finally supporting flourishing. In the regime on deep sea-bout mining, ocean equity is about collective resource management and the sharing of benefits. It involves addressing those disparities in power, in wealth, and access to ocean resources while promoting sustainability and stewardship. I think ocean equity is where there is a platform for voices to not only be heard but validated. The big equity issue that we face at the moment is climate change. I'm really motivated by that idea of intergenerational equity and the responsibility that we have to try and do what we can now to minimise that impact. So now we will zoom into a few concrete examples of ocean equity issues that the anchorist team is working on. And to give us some of these examples, let's go back to Encore's Quentin Hanik. I work on fisheries governance, marine conservation, equity and transboundary fisheries. So for example, in 2008, the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission successfully negotiated its first proper big tropical tuna conservation and measurement measure. And that was a big deal, like we had the biggest party at the end of it and we celebrated because it had been a long difficult process to negotiate and a consensus for that. And that measure put in place hard limits on big eye because we, at the time, the science was telling us that big eye was overfished and overfishing was continuing. So we had to agree on mechanisms that would reduce fishing impacts on big eye tuna. And we also needed to put in place other limitations on how many fish aggregating devices you might deploy, how much long-lining you might undertake and how much per se fishing you might undertake. And different people had different interests and different gears and different fisheries and different species. So it's a complex conservation measure. And at the end of the day, we satisfactorily agreed on an outcome that would go some way to implementing the scientific advice. And that would include both the waters under national jurisdiction of the developing states and it would also include the high seas where the distant water fishing fleets fished. And we came out with what I would describe as an equitable outcome. It put in place hard limits for the developed distant water fishing fleets. It put in place hard limits for certain activities within the coastal waters of the small island states. But it also recognized their special requirements and also recognized the need to avoid putting in place a disproportionate burden of conservation on them. Most of those small island states hadn't caused the problem. And also the historical nature, there were legacies that we also needed to address. So the exemptions that we negotiated for the developing states were very much part of ocean equity. We were recognising their special requirements, avoiding a disproportionate burden and granting exemptions for small island developing states in certain fields. And that's ocean equity. My name is Kamal Asmi. I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, ANCORS, at the University of Wollongong. I do research into issues relating to transboundary fisheries and those sorts of issues include rights-based management, climate change and transparency in the way that regional fisheries management organisations are run. One of the biggest concerns relating to equity is about the allocation of access to the resource. So it's also probably the most difficult to negotiate. Limiting access to the fishery is one thing, but then there are many different countries that have an interest in those transboundary fisheries. And so RFMOs attempt to allocate access, allocate that limited access to countries, which always means that pretty much in every case there is not enough access altogether to go around to suit everyone's needs, which means someone has to take a cut. Or suffer a loss. And that is a very difficult thing to negotiate. One of the big sort of structural barriers to getting agreement on this is that there is no one sitting on top of these organisations who can make a decision. In a national government, a national fishing authority can listen to everyone's concerns and make a decision. And the government can through that fisheries authority or through the legislature can impose a decision once they've heard everyone. In an RFMO, there is no one doing that. Everyone has to agree. And most RFMOs make most decisions based on consensus, which means one member, one member country can veto the whole thing, the decision. And so you end up with decisions that often cater to that last whole air country, which means you often get weaker decisions than you otherwise might have made if there was someone sitting on top of this being able to with the power to make decisions. But that's not how international organisations work. So those negotiations can be very difficult. My name is Alina Jekyll. I'm an Associate Professor in Law here at ANCORS. My work looks at how to make sure that the management of deep ocean mineral resources is based on good governance principles such as transparency and public participation. And I also look at how the governance of deep ocean minerals can be integrated with the new BB&J Treaty on marine biodiversity. My name is Frey Kroft. I'm a postdoc researcher here at ANCORS and my work is at the intersections of ocean equity and blue economy governance, particularly with new and emerging coastal and offshore industries. A lot of our work at the moment is looking at community considerations around sort of that development of offshore wind or these emerging new industries. It's about realising that people come at these topics from really different points of view and want different things out of them and that sort of for a variety of reasons based on values or world views and that sort of thing. So I think there's absolutely negotiations that take place and that's kind of coming back to that process equity. So how we do those processes fairly and to make sure everybody sort of has a voice and to make sure that communities are consulted and engaged with in ways that are equitable and ways that are fair. My name is Randa Sassadon. My area of research at ANCORS is in storytelling narratives and ocean governance. I'm particularly interested in the ways that stories can influence our world view and how they play into the law and cast us into particular roles. I'm also interested in the potential of narratives and stories to open up new perspectives and alternative ways of governing which can potentially put us into a more holistic relationship with the ocean. The platform for voices to be heard and listened to but also to be appreciated at a deeper level, engaging in ways of knowing and being in the world that are different or alternative to what we may be accustomed to. In Western scholarship we very much train to be objective and maintain an objective perspective which has a tendency to disconnect us from our environment and the ocean. And I found in other cultures this disconnection does not always exist and the connection is very much alive. And I think we have a lot to learn and a lot to feel as human beings if we are able to open our minds up to our connection as human being to the environment, the atmosphere, the ocean, the sky and how they are all interconnected together. My motivation to work on this is because we can see patterns of behaviour or problems that re-occur time and time again. And my thinking is that this behaviour stems from values which are embedded in particular world views. And the world view itself is often based on a narrative of how we put ourselves as humans in relation to the environment or the ocean or those around us. So within that narrative we are cast in a particular role. For example, the ocean might be cast as a resource and then the human as a resource taker. But as an alternative we might also cast the ocean as a giver, a relative. And we may then in turn cast ourselves as a custodian. And it is my hope that this sentiment of custodian chip can exist alongside our other concerns and motivations for accessing ocean resources for human survival. My name is Michelle Boyer. I'm an Associate Professor here at ANCORS and I lead the Blue Futures team. We're particularly interested in community and indigenous led approaches to developing blue economies. The Blue Futures is connected to the ocean equity programme like we do have some funding from ocean nexus as well which is the broader funding mechanism for the ocean equity work that ANCORS does. But we're a little bit different in that our focus is very play space. It's very focused on local communities and we do a lot of work in trying to using that strength based approach. We work with local communities and particularly in the Ilawara and South Coast. We do a lot of work with indigenous communities. My name is Dr. Macrita Solite. I am an Associate Research Fellow here at ANCORS. I'm engaged in a range of projects over the past four years exploring mostly social contribution of marginalized and indigenous communities of Kenya and Australia to the blue and circulate economy. Because of that power imbalance, most decisions are made without the voices of indigenous and marginalized people being included. There's conflict of a marine jurisdiction like your exclusive economic zones who uses that who doesn't use that. Most of the times our indigenous brothers and sisters and communities are really sidelined. So when I talk about food security and ocean use is around that boundary. It's around climate impacts where mostly the marginalized and indigenous groups who use this ocean for food and other cultural practices. They're actually impacted by this extreme where they advance loss of biodiversity, ocean warming. And so that loss of livelihood and territories due to this climate induced changes brings inequality and then on top of that, this pollution. I'm part of a marginalized community myself being an African black woman and being privy to racism, being privy to discrimination like any other woman would go through. But as a black woman it's different. I have more empathy to see where people are marginalized or, you know, as silenced by policies and it affects them deeply. So I think that's my greatest motivation in working in that space and in working with indigenous groups and marginalized groups and resource constraints groups. But also more than that, like literally more than that, I really love this space. I love being outside, I love being in the ocean. I always feel connected to the salt water given that I've grown up around it all my life. And just being able to hear the stories from generations and generations on how the ocean has sustained my people. I feel like it's such a little thing to give back by just working in this space and making sure that I advocate for those who can't speak for themselves, both human and non-human. So we know EnCourse is a research institute at the University of Wollongong, but how does it practically contribute to advancing ocean equity, especially at these international negotiations? How does it work on the ground? I think my work has the potential to provide a platform for multiple voices to be heard in language. And so in that sense, we can, on the one hand, maintain knowledge that keeps us connected to the ocean, as well as have the potential to illuminate our own perspective about what the ocean means to humanity. As a university, we're not an advocate at these meetings. There are lots of non-government organisations, NGOs and associations of various interests groups that will participate as observers, and we participate as an observer. But unlike an NGO, we're not really there as an advocate. We have a strong interest in equity, but we go about it in the ways that a university typically does through our research and our teaching. So we address equity by really trying to crack the code on some complex issues. Are there allocation approaches that will deliver a more equitable outcome, for instance? Are there ways of dealing with climate change that avoid some of the inequities that inevitably arise from the impacts of climate change? So we can do research and we can promote that research and we often submit information papers based on that research. We also teach, because equity also stems from capacity, the differing levels of capacity between different countries. Many of the countries in Arafomo's, particularly in the part of the world that we focus a lot of our attention on in the Western and Central Pacific, consists of a lot of small island developing states. And that includes some countries that have incredibly small fisheries authorities. Yet fisheries has an enormous importance to their economies and to people's livelihoods. In some countries like Tavalu can be over 60 or 70% of government revenue can come from fisheries. And so their interests are incredibly strong in the way these fisheries are managed. But their fisheries authority is quite small. And so we can do a lot of teaching, professional training on Laura the C, maritime enforcement, fisheries management. We also run award courses like Master's Degree or this graduate certificate that I coordinate. They are all directed at people who are involved in the sector now and are seeking to upgrade their skills. So there's a range of different ways we can do this. Hopefully this podcast will also become a way of advocating for ocean equity as well. We have the most amazing collection of experts that have a passion for ocean and ocean governance and a raft of knowledge. And I think that that unique arrangement of us being interdisciplinary is really special. I don't think there's many places like that in the world, certainly in Australia, that brings together professionals from a range of different disciplines to work on the ocean. What I would love to see from this podcast is information on international negotiations that can help the audience better understand what's going on today. Historically it's interesting and historically that's important. But really what's happening as timely as we can make the podcast so that listeners who are not able to travel to New York or elsewhere can keep updated with what's happening that's relevant to ocean equity. And relevant to international conservation and management of ocean. Ocean equity is a big topic to grapple with in our first episode of negotiating the ocean. So what does it mean in practice and what can we expect from the next episodes? Bianca? Totally agreed to anybody. That was a lot to handle. So in the next episodes we are going to see how it plays out in the real world. So we are going to talk about biodiversity negotiations which are coming up in April. We talk about fisheries negotiations and also about how the deep sea mining regulations are going on. And our upcoming episode is on a new ocean treaty. How the agreement can make a difference. And we will be looking at the marine biodiversity negotiations at the UN that will happen in New York in April. And it's called BBNJ by Diversity Beyond National Truths Diction. Thank you so much for listening to our first episode of negotiating the ocean. A podcast about ocean equity in the international negotiations. I'm Jennifer Macy. I'm Ena Tasma from Wizoki and I'm Bianca Hars. Thank you to all the anchors researchers who spoke to us in this episode. And thank you to the Nibbun Foundation Ocean Nexus Program for their support. And thank you also to Emily Perkins for editing and Sunneva Yedman for communication after the podcast. If you want to find out more information about the work of anchors researchers, please go to our show notes where you can find links to their research. Or you can go to the website oceanequityresearch.org. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you've got any questions or comments about this podcast, email [email protected]. Thank you. Thanks everyone. See you next time.