On April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day, an annual day set aside to honor the environmental movement of the 70s to demand action for the health of our planet. World Ocean Radio decided to postpone talking about Earth Day this year in the hope that we might remind listeners that we must celebrate, speak out and stand up for the environment every day.
Ocean news is often bad news these days. We are bombarded with stories of pollution, overfishing, of sea level rise and the dire consequences of extreme weather and CO2 emissions. This week on World Ocean Radio, however, we're focusing on some good ocean news. In this episode we share some optimistic and encouraging headlines from the March/April issue of ECO magazine: a collection of stories highlighting progressive ocean solutions in the US and around the world.
Waste and waste management are new and increasing challenges in recent decades. How do we dispose of toxic waste, plastic packaging, electronics, and other discards of modern society? Where does it all go? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill outlines current efforts to recycle and repurpose trash in efforts to slow the contribution to the waste stream, and he suggests some new ideas for turning waste into profit.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, part 2 of a two-part series on environmental law, host Peter Neill provides a series of examples of systems we have in place to protect nature and its resources. These protections extend from international treaties to intergovernmental agencies and NGOs working to enact and secure maritime policies, governance and legal rights; and from law centers to the United Nations working to set standards for marine protections and indigenous peoples rights, and for the conservation of Nature, ecosystems, and natural resources.
Laws protect us from abuse, they preserve the stasis of systems, and they maintain stability and sustainability. We live in a time when the vast majority of the world's wealth is derived from the exploitation of natural resources, and there are laws and legal responses to protect those resources from corruption. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill outlines a series of additional laws that are intended to protect Nature and its resources--water, fresh air, food, and all living organisms--from corrupt values, indifference, and the consequences of exploitation. And he reaffirms the importance of the Public Trust Doctrine which demands that all resources must be sustained for the benefit of ensuing generations. "Nature and the Rule of Law" is part one of a two-part series dedicated to environmental law.
A recent video showing a torrent of plastic rushing down a river in Guatemala prompted World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill to respond this week with a clarion call asking us to confront plastic pollution. In this episode he asks why, given our capacity for ingenuity, we currently lack the technology, motivation and incentive to clean up the plastic pollution problem plaguing the world ocean.
Aquaculture has long been a controversial industry fraught with conflict: waste and feed pollution, use of antibiotics, escape of genetically modified species, and more. But as seafood demand continues to grow unabated and overfishing practices continue, the farm-grown fish industry will continue to function as a response to that demand. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill outlines a number of steps and improved technologies that have been employed to change the aquaculture industry from a negative to a positive producer in the world economy.
World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill recently returned from the Economist World Ocean Summit in Cancún, Mexico where he gathered with 400 ocean leaders and decision makers to discuss ocean policy, strategies, research, exploration and innovation. In this 461st episode of World Ocean Radio he shares what was discussed at the summit but also what was left out: namely the global fresh water cycle and the ocean as a financial, political, social, and cultural system. And he shares a surprising discovery made while swimming in an underground limestone cave in the the Mayan ruins at Chitzenitsa.
The pursuit for oil continues, even as many alternatives emerge and investments are displaced. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill discusses the various governments around the world doubling down on their search for and extraction of oil, even as the world appears ready to move beyond the investment toward cleaner technologies.
Early in 2018, BlackRock asset management chair Larry Fink issued a statement declaring growing public demand for companies to serve a social purpose. He asserted that, increasingly, both public and private companies must be able to explain their social and environmental impacts and be able to demonstrate leadership to drive prosperity and security--not just for their own investment returns--but for all. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill hails this paradigm shift suggested by Mr. Fink and proposes a World Ocean Fund for investment-based forward-looking technologies, sustainability and responsibility in markets to shape the 21st century and beyond.
Ocean technologies and exploration are expanding at a remarkable pace, giving scientists and casual observers more data by which to learn more about ocean systems, fish migrations, fisheries management, physics, biochemistry, weather, climate, ecosystems, and much more. In this week's episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill examines sail drones, an emerging technology that offers ocean data collection that is flexible, cost effective, easily recoverable, easy to maintain, and re-programmable at sea.
We live in an age of constant chatter, yet we are failing globally to communicate meaningfully on issues related to Arctic governance and its natural resources. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill discusses the many interests in Arctic oil, gas, uranium, fisheries, tourism, trade, and transportation in a changing Arctic, and questions why a constructive dialogue between native peoples and corporate interests has yet to be formulated.
A recent east coast storm unearthed the remains of America's last slave ship in Alabama: the Clotilda. These remains, and the artifacts from another slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, are important symbols of the cultural relationship and interconnected history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In this episode of World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill speaks about maritime culture, the last slave ships, the atrocities of the slave trade, and the ways in which our cultural identity in the U.S. has been shaped by an amalgamation of cultures which has formed our settlement, movement, music, and language in powerful and positive ways.
What if we were to accept water--in all its forms and functions--as the system around which we organize and calculate value as a contribution to profit and loss? What if we did the same thing with fossil fuels, more accurately presenting the true cost of expenditure and consequences? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill argues that we need a new way to value water, and that if we accept water as both a basic human right and the new capital, it can become an investment of endless return.
On June 9th, 2018, a March For The Ocean (M4O) will take place in Washington, D.C. and in cities around the world. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will encourage listeners to gather in the nation's capital, to find a march in a city nearby, to organize, and to volunteer. He will argue that we must declare, loudly and publicly, that the ocean will prevail and will continue to support us for generations to come if only we have the courage and the will to sustain it.
This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill introduces podcast listeners to WORLD OCEAN EXPLORER: an ambitious new project to create a free virtual aquarium and ocean exploration experience centered around STEM-based ocean literacy for students ages 10 and up. And he invites all listeners to share in the construction of this project by investing in its future today.
What is the framework by which to outline our values, structures, and behaviors regarding the ocean, fresh water, and all the benefits of nature required for human survival? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill examines this question and provides us with an overview of the Design Lens of Biomimicry 3.8, an organization dedicated to learning from the natural world in order to respond to our present day situation. He'll share the nine principles of the biomimicry architecture and argue that they provide a new vocabulary for us to understand the virtues of Nature if we are able to adopt them for a sustainable future.
This week on World Ocean Radio we celebrate marine protected areas and discuss their importance to biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, and the mitigation of climate change and other destructive forces at work on the planet.
At the end of each year, World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reads the poem "At The Fishhouses" by Elizabeth Bishop. This perennial favorite is chosen not only for its relevance for the New Year, but also because it distills years of Bishop's seaside meditations and evokes the clarity of meaning contained in personal encounters with the ocean.
Best wishes, now and for the New Year, from the World Ocean Observatory.
The first Arctic highway was the sea: a moving, shifting system that allowed its inhabitants to be sustained for generations. Since 1974, two more roads have been carved from the Arctic landscape: the first to connect oil fields in the north to consumers in the south; and the second, opened this year, to connect Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk. This second project, more of a local endeavor, links the land's indigenous peoples to economic opportunity and affordable goods and resources. This week we talk about these three roads and their impacts on the Arctic, for better and for worse.
This week on World Ocean Radio we talk about springs, those fresh water seeps that serve as an integral part of the earth's water system. We introduce listeners to a new app, Hide and Seep, developed by the Spring Stewardship Institute in collaboration with the US National Parks Service Bureau of Land Management and ESRI. Hide and Seep is a mapping software tool that allows citizen scientists to locate water sources and add them to a vast database of fresh water springs.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio we ask who benefits from current solutions to ocean acidification, co2 emissions, and plastic pollution, and if there might be simpler ideas that involve investments in green technologies, demand for alternatives, and a shift in attitudes and behaviors away from a bankrupt system of fossil fuels toward one of sustainability and solution.
In this week's episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill outlines some of the various applications of the oft-times controversial artificial intelligence technologies employed at sea. And he asserts that since the ocean is a place of connection, we should be thinking of digital platforms as a way to design and integrate global systems for a successful and sustainable future.
In this episode, host Peter Neill discusses the need for more funding and energy directed toward the vast unknown ocean, and the importance of scientific endeavor and observation. And he highlights the work of the General Bathymetric Chart for the Oceans (GEBCO), a project dedicated to completing the full mapping of the world ocean by 2030.
This week on World Ocean Radio: part five of a multi-part series on the Arctic. In this episode, host Peter Neill discusses the ongoing debate over geological claims to the Arctic and who owns the rights to the natural resources in the vast outer limits of Arctic waters.
