(NEWS) Land to Ocean Leadership: Indonesian Ambassador Commends World Maritime University

December

2020

Land to Ocean Leadership: Indonesian Ambassador Commends World Maritime University

On 9 December, the World Maritime University (WMU) hosted the Annual Seminar of the Land-to-Ocean Leadership Research and Capacity-Building Programme and reviewed the interactions between Science, Society and Ocean Governance.

HE Ambassador Arif Havas Oegroseno, Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to the Federal Republic of Germany, opened the seminar with a resounding keynote address that commended WMU for being at the forefront of providing global maritime and ocean education and research. He said that the University had a well deserved reputation for organizing insightful conferences and educating thousands of professionals worldwide with maritime and ocean qualifications. The Ambassador noted that the work of the four PhD candidates explored matters of global concern and that the research outcomes should be shared with IMO member States, the States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as the members of the Archipelagic and Small Island States Forum.

The projects are being undertaken by four scholars on vital research topics, namely:

Luciana Fernandes Coelho (Brazil): The Consent Regime for Marine Scientific Research under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in Changing Circumstances: a case study of the Caribbean and Pacific Small Islands Developing States;
Kahlil Hassanali (Trinidad and Tobago): The BBNJ agreement and its inter-relationship with the blue economy of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM);
Zaidy Afrin (Fiji): Scuba Diving Industry’s Contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 14 - Life below water: Case study of small Island Developing States;
Andrei Polejack (Brazil): The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development as A Mean to Advance Science Diplomacy - the All Atlantic Research Alliance Case Study.

Dr Cleopatra Doumbia Henry, WMU President, addressed the participants and noted that the PhD candidates were selected from a highly competitive process. She congratulated the candidates on their progress to date and encouraged them to take advantage of the expert advice available to them among the high-level commentators assembled to provide feedback, which brought together world leading scholars and scientists to review the programme including: Professor Nilüfer Oral, Director of the Center for International Law, National University of Singapore; Professor Larry Mayer, Director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire; Dr. Andrew Merrie, Research Liaison Officer at Stockholm Resilience Centre; Professor Olof Linden, Professor Emeritus and Special Advisor, Office of the President, WMU; and Dr. Harriet Harden-Davies, Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Fellow at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

Catarina Hedar from the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM) and Björn Oriwohl from the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure and their respective teams expressed the satisfaction of the programme donors with the work underway and the quality of the research team at the WMU-Saskawa Global Ocean Institute.

About the Land-to-Ocean Leadership Research and Capacity-Building Programme

The Land-to-Ocean Leadership Programme is a three-year research and capacity-building programme sponsored by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM) and the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany. The Programme is managed within WMU by the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute that was established in 2018, with support from The Nippon Foundation, the Governments of Sweden, Canada, and Germany, as well as the City of Malmö. The vision of the Institute is to act as an independent focal point for the ocean science-policy-law-industry-society interface where policy makers, the scientific community, regulators, industry actors, academics, and representatives of civil society meet to discuss how best to manage and use ocean spaces and their resources in accordance with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Land-to-Ocean Leadership Programme aims to promote opportunities in the broader context of implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in recognition of the interconnectivity of Land-to-Ocean-flows. In order to develop governance and sustainable management options that are practically oriented yet responsive to dynamic processes, the programme will foster a better understanding of the interconnected character of terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems flowing from source to sea.

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