BIO
Marc Taconet is the Team Leader of the Information Management and Knowledge Team at FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, in Rome Headquarters. His career spans from 15 years of appointments in the Caribbean, West Africa, Western Indian Ocean and North Africa as biostatistician and GIS expert involved in capacity development activities, to 24 years of various responsibilities in FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Department (Rome), including Head of the Statistics and Information Branch, leading FAO’s Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS), Secretary of the Fisheries and Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS) Partnership, interim Secretary of the Coordinating Party on Fishery Statistics (CWP) during years 2015-2019, Chair of the iMarine Board, and alternate focal point for SDG Indicator SDG14.4.1.
Why have you decided to join the Blue-Cloud 2026 ESEB and what contributions you can bring?
FAO has been continuously engaged since 2008 in EU data infrastructure funded projects with the objective to leverage EU’s digital innovation and provide IT solutions to the needs expressed by the global fisheries and aquaculture community. With thousands of worldwide users of the developed VREs we demonstrated that digital innovation can generate impact for example to facilitate countries reporting on SDG indicator 14.4.1 “proportion of fish stocks within sustainable biological levels”. Today the global policy environment emphasizes the importance of marine biodiversity, of healthy ocean environment and ecosystems including through reduction of plastic pollution, of mitigating and adapting to climate change; fisheries and aquaculture are those human activities of high value to food security, nutrition, and livelihoods which need to mainstream these new realities in management processes including the science-based evidence for decision making. The Blue Cloud 2026 has this high potential to provide the cross-disciplinary science which this sector needs to adapt to today’s sustainability challenge, and I believe that as ESEB member, I can play my part and try influence in this direction towards impact.