The Our Ocean Conference series is focused on generating voluntary commitments for significant and meaningful actions towards a clean, healthy and productive ocean. Previous conferences have resulted in nearly one thousand commitments from NGOs, industry and governments around the world. The 2019 edition of the Our Ocean Conference, hosted by the Norwegian government, highlighted the importance of knowledge as the basis of actions and policies to ensure protection of our ocean, responsible management of marine resources and sustainable future economic growth.
On the occasion of the conference JPI Oceans is pleased to announce four new commitments:
Within the framework of the AquaticPollutants Cofund, the JPIs on Water, Oceans and Anitimicrobial Resistance will commit the equivalent of € 26 million including €5.1 million co-funding from the European Commission. The investment will strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in the field of clean and healthy aquatic ecosystems and to leverage untapped potential in the collaboration between the freshwater, marine and health research areas.
Ammunition dumped at sea during or after wars constitutes an environmental and safety issue in many European countries. 11 countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are involved in this action. The aim of the Action is to coordinate research and innovation to assess risks, define priorities and suggest intervention options with regards to munition in the marine environment. The added-value of this JPI Oceans Action consists of three aspects:
- Introducing and structuring a European scientific interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation
- Providing an interface between scientific expertise and operators
- Contributing to cost and time efficient solutions.
The action will be ongoing as long as te members see an added value in the cooperation over and above what they can achieve nationally.
In a cooperation between JPI Climate and JPI Oceans, 9 member countries - France, Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway and Portugal - mobilise €8.6 million for a joint call on oceans and climate interactions. The ambition is that it will trigger a new wave of innovative Climate Services. The joint call focuses on the following topics:
- Strengthening our understanding of climate variability and extremes resulting from the interactions with the oceans such as extratropical and tropical cyclones, and how they are affected by climate change on a range of time scales.
- Improving the representation of air-sea interactions, physical and biogeochemical ocean processes in Earth System Models to better represent small-scale non-linear processes as well as water, energy and carbon cycles. Model-data analyses using innovative approaches will be welcome.
- Improving estimates of climate change induced modifications of ocean physics and ocean chemistry, associated with biogeochemical cycles, including ocean acidification and carbon sequestration.
Under the framework of the project MarTERA (ERA-NET Cofund), supported by the European Commission, €15.7 million for research funding in maritime and marine technology development has been committed by Germany, Belarus, Belgium, France, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey and South Africa in a second call. This initiative is coordinated by the funding organisation of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). MarTERA will fund from 2020 the development of environmentally friendly maritime technologies, novel materials and structures, sensors, automation, monitoring and observations, advanced manufacturing and production, safety and security.
All commitments can be found on the conference website.