Written by Savannah Hartmann
Honolulu, Hawaii – Hundreds of posters. Hundreds of people. To say I was inspired by the amount of ideas and people in the room was an understatement. I felt truly honored to be among the rest of the poster presenters and giddy as I watched conference conveners herd attendees toward our posters like inquisitive cattle.
I met the most wonderful people as they hesitantly approached my poster. Perhaps they were intimidated by the title “Bridging the Gap between Ocean Policy Drivers and Ocean Observing Requirements: Integrating Science and Implementation”.
But not to fear! A smile was all it took to put them at ease.
Talking with Emmett Duffy from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, a fellow member of MBON Pole-to-Pole.
Soon, each guest that approached me was involved in a delightful conversation about
how all ocean users can improve the indicators of U.N. Sustainable Development Goal
14: Life Below Water. SDG 14 has 10 targets with indicators associated with each
target ranging from reducing ocean acidification to better implementing international
law and the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea.
My colleagues and I did a literature and policy review of developing and developed countries to determine where indicators were working and where they weren’t. Overall the main goal of the poster is to create more international and intergovernmental collaborations to fulfill each target set forth by SDG 14. If you’re interested in the specifics, reach out to me!
I have a wonderful team at CMS that invested heavily in this project, and we are very proud of our ideas, which we hope will be used to integrate science and policy by bringing scientists to the political table.