News

ECO Magazine announced today the first edition of the 2021 digital series: The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. This exclusive digital edition is being produced in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

Leaders of Australia, Canada, Chile, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Norway, Palau and Portugal commit to sustainably manage nearly 30 million sq km of their national waters by 2025. Leaders put a healthy ocean at the top of the global policy agenda to accelerate economic recovery.

Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Although the adoption of marine spatial plans is increasing worldwide, many regions and countries still need support to adopt or fully implement them.

The Second Session of the IOC Group of Experts on Capacity Development (GE-CD) was held online on 26 October 2020. The meeting discussed, among other things, the preliminary results of the Capacity Development Needs Assessment survey, the contribution of IOC to the Capacity Development chapter of the Ocean Decade, and agreed on extending the current CD strategy to 2023.

The Danish Board of Technology organized the “Consensus Conference on the Danish Marine Environment: Our Ocean” (23-24 October, 2020), funded by VELUX Foundations. The objective was to increase public awareness of the marine environment and bring citizens' viewpoints into the political debate.

The coming decade will be big – for the ocean, the various communities who have a stake in a healthy ocean, and indeed the whole world.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has just approved a USD 53 million grant to develop the biogeochemical mission of the global Argo array.

On 30 October 2020, a significant tsunami triggered by an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 Mw hit the island of Samos (Greece) and the Aegean coast of the Izmir region (Turkey). The event shed light – once again – on the complexity of warning of locally generated tsunamis of rapid onset which challenged the ability of local authorities and communities at risk to take early action.