ZMT - Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung

The year 2022 will hold a multitude of central decisions and course settings for marine protection and international ocean policy. A number of important conferences in this respect are planned to take place in person next year, following the restrictions imposed by the Corona pandemic, and will advance or even conclude relevant processes at the international level. These include the UN Ocean Conference in Portugal, the World Conference on Nature in China, the World Climate Conference in Egypt as well as the negotiations on deep-sea mining, the BBNJ Convention and the FAO Conference on Fisheries and Aquaculture.

In addition, 2022 is the International Year of Small-scale Fisheries and Aquaculture. All the debates and negotiations linked to these events raise questions about the relationship between environment and development and the future of the oceans. This concerns possible approaches to compensate for loss and damage in the context of climate negotiations as well as initiatives to protect the role of small-scale fisheries in food security or the expansion of marine protected areas. Last but not least, they touch a core of SDG 14 and thus of the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon next June. Our conference would like to create the space to address and discuss some of these issues in advance. To this end, the discussions will reflect on the developments during the last two years, which were influenced by the Corona pandemic, and look forward from there.

The conference will have two focal points. On the one hand, it will focus on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans and the corresponding shaping of climate policy. Secondly, it will take up the overarching relationship between environment and development in the strategies of the Blue Economy. This discussion will address fundamental aspects of ocean policy that play an important role in all the international processes mentioned. In this context, the negotiations on deep-sea mining or on species protection as well as fisheries policy with a view to the year 2022 will be discussed. In this context, the extent to which the formation of the new German government and the agreements in the coalition agreement could change German positions on the international stage and contribute to the coherence of maritime policy will be discussed.

Information on the programme at: https://fair-oceans.info/konferenz-15-12-21-ozeane-und-meere-zwischen-klimawandel-und-neuen-nutzungsinteressen/

When: 15 December 2022 | 10:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m.
Where: Online (Zoom)

Participation is free of charge. The conference language is German.

Registration by email is requested at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

After registration, a Zoom link will be sent to you before the event.
Due to the restrictions imposed by Corona, discussions often came up short despite all the webinars. This web conference is therefore expressly intended to provide time for discussion and to enable guests from politics, business and civil society to present their approaches to solving the many problems facing the oceans and to exchange ideas with the other participants.