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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
I am in an exemplary place. I have come for three weeks to a remote farm and residency for artists and writers in Westfjords, Iceland --- a place of unimaginable beauty, at the head of a fjord, surrounded by mountain walls, threads of water falling, whales spouting, fog, mist, sunshine, moonlight, rain, snow – the full catalogue of Nature, unsullied and unmarked by our clumsy, consumption-driven hands. It is a perfect place to sit and craft a pro-volutionary plan, looking forward and through, with presumptive, aspirational intent as an individual collective manifesto for “how the ocean will save civilization.”
The nearest town is 45 minutes away by gravel road subject to avalanche and drifting, through a 5 and half mile “one way” tunnel carved through the base of a solid rock barrier between where I sit and the main town of the region, Isafjordur, population 2600, center of civilization and service in the remote northwest of Iceland. It is a place for essentials: provision, medical treatment, airport, airport, an expresso coffee, and a real pizza. Isafjordur is an “island within an island.”
It is also a quiet example of the application of new values, structures, and behaviors in a 21st century characterized by the exigencies of changing climate felt everywhere elsewhere, confusing, indeed confounding, our sense of the future. Nature in Iceland is omni-present, distant, then startlingly revealed by the aura of the northern lights or the social echo of volcanic eruption and lava flow very much in the news here today.
I made a list of the evidence of the town’s unique identity:
SCALE: the presence of Nature all around, an imposition fo land and sea; WATER: the richness of supply, pure, fresh and salt, as the obvious, most obvious asset for health and continuity; ENERGY, the existing adaptation to geo-thermal and hydro generation; FOOD, the evident supply of fish and ocean aquaculture as source of sustenance; ADDED VALUE, the innovative, derivative production of export packaging and innovation; TRANSPORTATION, access by air, road, ship, and ferry; TRADE, the extension of enterprise by marine link within Iceland, to Europe, Asia, and North America; CULTURAL HISTORY, as evinced by as charming and informative small maritime museum as I have seen in comparable outpost; TOURISM, facilitated by cruise chip access and a special environment for individual outdoor and maritime recreation; ARTS, respect for cultural traditions through creative residencies and a well-known music festival; EDUCATION, local schools and the University Centre of the Westfjords, programs in maritime development, distance learning, advanced degrees, foreign student exchange, Icelandic and Arctic Studies; and finally HEALTH, national health care and public geo-thermal baths. All this suggests a successful underlying social and civic organization to make it work. All of this suggest, yes, a plan enabled by , founded on sustainability principles, driven by intention, exercised through competence and effective application, and indicative of a community that has recognized a path to the future and community viability in a rapidly changing world.
I am sure there are issues and problems, and I risk romanticization and ignorance of what I cannot see. But the point need not be so analytic or absolute. It can be made as an example of what can be, will be, when comparable wisdom, experience, and commitment is made to precepts on which the progress can be designed and realized. I can think of many towns, around the world, with comparable assets and opportunities. Several where I live are struggling toward similar outcomes even if the actual iterations will be different. The importance is to recognize the need to look forward and through, to a fresh vision, based on new ideas, innovation, and willingness to abandon the past, and to have the imagination and courage to make real change real.
Welcome to Isafjordur, and to Listogland Farm, here in this astonishing place between land and sea.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean
Radio.
We will disuss these issues and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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[outro music, ocean sounds]
