Regional brainstorming on the UN Decade of Ocean Science

Over 150 representatives from academia, governmental agencies, international organizations, industry, and non-governmental organizations met in Tokyo, Japan, in August 2019 to brainstorm on how to achieve the objectives of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The UN Decade declared by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2017 endeavors to provide countries full support to achieve the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals through the ocean science. The Tokyo meeting, organized by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational of the Scientific and Cultural Organization's Sub-Commission for the Western Pacific, provided additional details of the decade, highlighted the knowledge gaps and questions to be answered by science, informed of the existing and potential scientific initiatives and interventions, as well as partnerships and resources. Currently, effective capacity-building and information exchange and sharing become critical, so do the modern ways of sustainable communications. Six working groups worked on the following themes: clean ocean, healthy and resilient ocean, predicted ocean, safe ocean, sustainably harvested and productive ocean, and transparent and accessible ocean. Recommendations developed the need for additional research to better understand sources, transport routes, and the fate functions of nutrients. High-quality data on a variety of chemical pollutants will further inform the design of a comprehensive initiative to reduce plastic pollution. The participants highlighted that there is a need for two-way communications between scientists, the public, and policymakers. For ocean forecasts, application of modern high-resolution ocean coupled models, for instance, weather-to-climate, physical-biogeochemical coupled models, forecast systems, as well as integrated marine ecosystem models. Meeting participants suggested enhancing partnerships with regional and transnational organizations, including the Northwest Pacific Action Plan, in the utilizing modeling results, also for capacity-building. Improving the research and data will inspire investments into the technologies that provide valuable safety information to communities, noted participants. For a sustainably harvested and productive ocean, experts suggested to improve the identification of ecosystem thresholds, stock assessments and monitoring of fishery removals, and develop indicators of sustainability. For new initiatives, it is essential to use tools from both natural and social sciences. New initiatives should be community-based, bottom-up, and locally focused. The meeting called to accelerate the current efforts to bring the complete spectrum of biological data into the data system and aggregate data from biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction areas. The Northwest Pacific Action Plan highlighted the importance of converting results of scientific research into policy recommendations and, this way, to help the countries to achieve the targets set by the United Nations. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization requested the Northwest Pacific Action Plan will continue supporting the activities related to the UN Decade of Ocean Sciences.