The United Nations has declared the next ten years 2021-2030, the ‘Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.’ The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography has proudly joined together with other national and international society, academic, NGO, and industry groups to become a ‘nexus organization’ through the U.S. National Committee for the UN Decade, hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
In the spirit of similar campaigns in the past that have coalesced the global community around the goal of advancing collaborative ocean science, the Decade seeks to mobilize the global science and ocean community once again to achieve the UN’s 2030 Sustainability Goals around ocean health and resilience. As a nexus organization and an international professional aquatic science society, ASLO hopes to engage our membership in Decade activities and share Decade news and updates, as well as serve as resource of expertise across the oceanographic and limnological sciences.
Decade activities aim to involve the entire science-policy spectrum with a focus on 7 societal outcomes – a clean ocean, a healthy and resilient ocean, a productive ocean, a predicted ocean, a safe ocean, an accessible ocean, and an inspiring ocean. The Decade’s tagline perhaps describes it best- “The science we need for the ocean we want.” The Decade organizers have highlighted many ambitious scientific goals to support these societal outcomes, including a global comprehensive ocean atlas and ocean observing systems for all major basins, which will indeed require immense international cooperation from all levels of society. You can read more on the Decade’s official page here. Currently, the US National Committee is seeking ideas for transformative or “disruptive” research ideas – known as “Ocean-Shots” – from the community to advance the Decade agenda, with the second call for submissions due July 1. Read more here.
The 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting (cosponsored by AGU, ASLO, and TOS) hopes to serve as a springboard for Decade discussions and action. Be sure to follow the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022 Newsletter for up-to-date information on developing conference activities from the organizers. Additionally, continue to check back at also.org often and follow us on Twitter (as well as the OSM hashtag #OSM22) for organizational updates relevant to the Decade.
Call to our membership! Have ideas or suggestions on how ASLO can engage in the Decade? We want to hear from you! Please reach out to communications@aslo.org.