In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the format of the International Ocean Governance (IOG) Forum, originally scheduled for 22-24 April in Brussels was partially turned into an online happening.
The IOG-Forum Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) were launched via online webinars between 22-24 April. More than 400 ocean actors, stakeholders and experts joined the webinars from around the world – demonstrating a strong commitment to ocean governance in such difficult times.
These were the three TWGs featured as part of the IOG Webinars:
- TWG 1 – “Improving the international ocean governance framework”, which met on 22 April.
- TWG 2 – “Reducing pressure on oceans and seas and creating the conditions for a sustainable ‘blue’ economy”, which met on 23 April.
- TWG 3 – “Strengthening the ocean knowledge system”, which met on 24 April.
Strengthening the ocean kwowledge system
Blue-Cloud took part in the third TWG, as Project Coordinator Sara Garavelli (Trust-IT Services) introduced the key role of our project in supporting data frameworks and ocean services. International collaboration and the enhancement of ocean observation systems are fundamental in order to attain common goals for both the research community and policy-makers, especially in the context of global challenges such as climate change. Blue-Cloud is also one of the thematice projects connected to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative, serving the Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas.
The project will federate ten major European blue data infrastructures, as well as encourage the adoption of the FAIR data principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability in the field of marine research. One of the main long-term goals is to cooperate with other initiatives, also outside of Europe, on the Roadmap 2030 and towards a global Blue-Cloud.
Here you can watch the full recording of TWG 3, the Blue-Cloud presentation starts at 1:25:05.
The first physical meeting of the International Ocean Governance Forum is currently scheduled for 9-11 December 2020.
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