ocean certain fp7-env-2013.6.1-1 project number 603773...

Delivery date: 31. October 2014 Authors: Tatiana Tsagaraki UiB E-mail : [email protected] Rachel Tiller NTNU E-mail : [email protected] Hugo Salgado TALCA E-mail : [email protected]

OCEAN CERTAIN FP7-ENV-2013.6.1-1

Project number 603773

Deliverable 4.2 Report of meeting to receive advice and info from Key

Stakeholders (KS) and KDTG WP’s leader: UiB

Principal investigators: Frede Thingstad, UiB (NO)

Tatiana Tsagaraki, UiB (NO) Rachel Tiller, NTNU (NO)

Hugo Salgado, TALCA (CH)

Project’s coordinator: Yngvar Olsen, NTNU (N)

1. (Popular) Description of deliverable The purpose of the deliverable is to organize and participate in meetings to receive advice and information from key stakeholders and key dissemination target groups. The advice and information sought will be then used to identify key variables, drivers and indicators that are of importance to the end users. Stakeholder input is crucial to obtaining this information and it is required that they understand the issues involved and are willing to participate in providing the required feedback. Ocean Certain was invited to participate in the World Ocean Councils Business Forum for Ocean Policy and Planning meeting in September 2014 and a special workshop was organized by Ocean Certain in the framework of the meeting in order to obtain the information needed for deliverable 4.2. Participation to the workshop was optimal, representatives of all major industries involved in the World Ocean Council were present, making the fruitful and productive. 2. Summary of contribution of involved partners to deliverable Partners from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), the University of Talca (TALCA) and the University of Bergen (UiB) participated in the workshop and subsequent meeting. All partners contributed to setting up the program for the workshop and coordinating the presentations and discussion that followed. There was an effort to have a balance between providing accurate information while using not too technical terms, and it appeared this achieved since the stakeholders were very involved in the scenario construction and discussion that followed. Although Ocean Certain was invited to attend the meeting, the workshop was a joint effort between Ocean Certain partners in order to fulfill the goals of deliverable 4.2- Meeting to receive advice and info from Key Stakeholders (KS) and KDTG. The joint target was to promote Ocean Certains work, explain the main scientific objectives of the project and concepts involved and receiving constructive feedback from the stakeholders as to how they perceive the challenges they are faced with. One of the successes of the workshop was that the participants engaged with the partners and gave very useful feedback but also they had the opportunity to voice their questions and opinions on the subject matter they were presented with.

3. Details part 1 3.1 Introduction The Business Forum for Ocean Policy and Planning was an initiative of the World Ocean Council (WOC). WOC is a cross-sectoral initiative that focuses on “Corporate Ocean Responsibility”. The purpose of the organisation, according to the WOC chair, is “to help promote collaboration and interaction between industries to address impacts, reduce conflicts and develop proactive ocean sustainability”. For the purposes of the project the organisations and industries involved are groups that are identified as stakeholders and many of these groups are directly influenced both by changes in the marine environment and also policy changes. Members seek to be informed of ocean policy and planning processes affecting their business and future operations and want to be involved in developments. Specifically, the forum focus was Industry Leadership in Ocean Governance and the Blue Economy.

Thematic areas included Collaboration in Science-Based Ocean Policy and Marine Planning, and the case for business getting involved. Apart from the participation of the industry community, public bodies and organisations were also strongly represented at the forum; These included the European Commission, which was represented by the European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) represented by Craig McLean, Acting Assistant Administrator, the department of Fisheries and Oceans of Canada (DFO), the United Nations (UN), through various representatives, and many more. It was apparent that there was a large number of stakeholders, scientists and policy makers involved in the meeting, which acted as an interface for science, policy and society in that all sectors were represented and heard during the course of the forum. The forum program is attached as a separate document 3.2 Details of workshop organised by Ocean-Certain The workshop title was: Changing Oceans and Industry Futures- How will changes to the ocean affect ocean business? It was held at the Roosevelt Hotel on Sunday the 28th of September 2014. As part of the dissemination of Ocean Certain, and involvement and participation of stakeholders, the President of the World Ocean Council had a press release about the workshop and invited participants to sign up for the session. The press release is part of the attachments. The workshop program comprised of both information and feedback sections as follows: 12:30 PM Workshop lunch sponsored by Ocean Certain (for participants who have been invited to register for the workshop) 1:00 PM Introduction: The Ocean Certain Research Project A short, non-technical introduction of the three aspects of the Ocean Certain project: the impact of stressors on marine systems, the vulnerability and resilience of coastal communities and the development of a decision support system for decision-makers. The session will allow time for industry questions and feedback. 1.30 PM Listening to the WOC Ocean Business Community The Ocean Certain project was formulated by scientists. But what do ocean industries think? This is your chance to tell the Ocean Certain team what they are missing and should be focusing on – in this project or the next. 2:00 Participatory mapping: Tell us about your world! The Ocean Certain moderator and industry participants will work together to construct a rough conceptual map of how the ocean industry world works. You are the experts: What affects your business? Which factors impact your decisions? How are impacts, causes and solutions interrelated? 3:00 Break 3:30 Participatory scenario construction: What does your future look like? Ocean Certain scientists and industry participants will work together to identify key ocean factors that affect ocean business and how likely these are to develop in the foreseeable future. Ocean Certain will help structure your expertise into a form that conveys information about key factors, the importance you place in these factors and how you see these affecting decision-makers and others. The session will generate a set of scenarios based on collective expertise and ask participants how likely these scenarios are to occur. 5:00 Closing Remarks: Where do we go from here? The Ocean Certain team will share the preliminary results of the workshop with participants, discuss how this will be considered in the project and plan further interaction with the WOC ocean business community.

5:30 End of workshop Participants included the chairman of the World Ocean Council as well as representatives of the shipping industry, fisheries, aquaculture, public bodies and scientists (not involved in Ocean Certain). The main presentations are added as attachments. The main even of the workshop was also to gather information from the stakeholders, however, using the methods that are to be used consistently in WP3 stakeholder workshops. This was done to create a baseline that was not geographically based, and thus hopefully more detached from local wishes. The following is a presentation of the main results of the workshop. 3.3 Methods and Results The participatory stakeholder workshop consisted of six stakeholders that were associated with the World Ocean Council. The stakeholders were self-selected using a press-release (attached) as a method of attracting relevant participants. The quality of the results sampled from this group far outweighs the relative small number of stakeholders involved, as is often the case in qualitative research studies where large samples can be ineffective and do not provide the detailed and contextual information wanted by the researcher. In a narrative analysis, which this project included, fifteen was judged by the researchers to be the maximum of what would provide a holistic narrative where all participants were given ample opportunity to share. The sample size can be as small as one or two as well, if this participant has information that is of critical value for that given sector and advances the research towards a specific goal (Sandelowski 1995).

The systems thinking process was initiated by presenting pertinent background information about the OCEAN-CERTAIN project to the stakeholders (attached). The participants were then prompted to visualize a future where climate change would push a set of drivers, and reflect on how they felt changes in these drivers would affect their representative stakeholder group. This was done to make the imagery more relevant for the stakeholders, and to obtain more context-related responses. We explained to them as well the vulnerability model developed in WP3, and showed them a visualization of said model (figure 1). This vulnerability model was developed to analyze the vulnerability of coastal communities to the effects of climate change on the marine ecosystems and was constructed over the VAS Model of Turner et al. (2003) and applies to the specific context of the interactions between climate change, marine ecosystems and coastal communities. The model has an environmental and a socioeconomic component. The environmental side of the model is based on the shared knowledge of the partners of the project collected during a workshop held during the kick-off meeting in the project using a system thinking technique, which gave us the key drivers in the model – and the ones that were used during the workshop.

Professor Hugo Salgado explained the model to them first. He explained that we needed information from them as key stakeholders and find out what is important to communities or NGOs or compainies, and how they understand the problems or opportunities caused by climate change. He explained how information was first gathered from the natural scientists at the kick off meeting in 2013, and that the natural scientists had said that the connections between the drivers and the biological pump was relatively simple. He then proceeded to show them a figure (figure 2) that showed what the natural scientists considered to be a simple picture. He then proceeded to explain that with this information, however, we were able to get to the more simple version created by VITO (figure 3).

ClimateChange

Food Web BP Function Sea SurfaceTemperature

Ocean CO2Ocean

Acidification Water quality Water Pollution Algae Blooms

Fish Shellfish Algae MammalsOther

EcosystemGood andServices

ArtisanalFishermen

IndustrialFishermen Aquaculture Processing plants Tourism industry Community

Bussiness &CommunityResponses

Policy MakersResponses

Figure 1: Social Vulnerability Model from WP3

Changes in Microand MacroNutrients

Increases inTemperature AcidificationReduction in

LightDeoxygenation Pollution Overfishing

bad smell

hidrodensulfite?toxic

fish die

fish floating in surface

benthic animal die

dead zone

algae bloom

unpleasent for tourist

eutrophication

reduce iron

releases phosphates

changes incirculation in deep

oceannutrients

antifouling &chemicals

microbial pathogens

sewages

diseases

seafoood

shell fishcorals

fishermen

fish farms

antibiotics

fish stressed and sick

decrease in ph

harder to makecalcium carbonate

zooplancton

key species

pterapod

birds die

phospatees:nitrogentchemical equilibriumchanges

hard to capture CO2

larvae

change ecosystem

fitoplancton

healthy ocean

less nutrients

toxic algae bloom

consumers

less fish

more jellyfish

rain wash soilfrom land hydrological cylce

more water from ice

photosyntesis insurface layer

distribution of species

iron soluble

took more CO2

bacteria likes iron

degrades de soil

smaller particles, lessenergy transfer to upper

troffic level

biologicalpump

industry any boat

accumulate infood chain

dioxins

bacteria antibioticresistance

too many boats

affect lower food web

favor species high turnover andmore sensitive to climate

fluctuations

more unstable fisheries

governance

benthic habitat

release of CO2 toatmosphere

Figure 2: Shared Conceptual Map from the System Thinking Exercise by the scientists at the Kick Off meeting of Ocean Certain in Amsterdam in November 2013.

Figure 3: Example of a simplified FCM for the conflict between fish farming and catch fisheries (presented at the IMBER Open Science Meeting, Bergen, June 23-27, 2014).

He then went on to explain that though these figures both were related mostly to natural sciences, there were also a few things that are important to the social scientists, as well like how aquaculture production is being affected, tourism is being affected, the catch of different fish, the fishing effort, and things that connect this natural system to society are also being affected. He explained that what we are working on is a vulnerability model and we want to know how people will be affected. He explained that in order for us to understand vulnerability, we need to understand some concepts, for instance, that are related to what is the sensitivity of human activity to these changes and what is changing that is important to humans, and what kind of resources these people have to adapt to.

He then explained figure 1 – the vulnerability model. He brought their attention to the main driver, climate change, and how a lot of things came from that, and that these were what we were considering the drivers. He explained that what we are hoping to find out is how these drivers will affect the ecosystem

goods and services that are important for communities such as fish, shellfish, algae, mammals and other ecosystem goods and services. We also want to find out how people in turn will be sensitive to those changes. Will artisanal fishermen be affected, will the industry, aquaculture, processing planters, tourism, or community in general be affected – and how?

An finally, he explaind that we also want to find out how the business community and the policy maker responses will be to these changes to both ecosystem services and stakeholders.

The workshop participants were then presented with seven ‘drivers’ of the aquaculture system from the vulnerability model. The selection of these drivers was based on the workshop held with the experts form the Ocean Certain group at the kick off meeting in Amsterdam in November 2013 (see figure 2). The drivers presented to the workshop participants were initially changes in the following variables:

• Food web;

• Function of the biological pump;

• Sea surface temperature;

• Ocean CO2;

• Ocean Acidification;

• Water quality;

• Water pollution; and

• Algae Blooms.

The main purpose of the predetermined drivers was to provide a starting point for the systems thinking process. It was clearly communicated to the stakeholders at the start of this process that the stakeholders themselves could amend these. Furthermore, they were also informed that they could introduce additional drivers if they felt that these were missing. The stakeholders did keep the drivers, but also added two more that they felt were of importance as drivers of the system, namely

• Other environmental variations/cycles; and • Other economic factors.

The participants were then asked to nominate additional elements (within the context of their system) that they believed would be influenced, either directly or indirectly (via other elements), by the driver elements. This exploration then led to identification of additional elements that represented possible management responses that could be used to mitigate any negative impacts to the stakeholders in the event of changes brought about due to climatic and non-climatic drivers. The variables identified by the stakeholders through this process were recorded on the systems modeling software Vensim (vensim.com) and projected on to the board for the stakeholders to see.

The workshop participants were then prompted by one of the researchers (acting as the workshop facilitator) to identify connections between these variables in the form of directional associations; for example, such connections could highlight that water quality affets area restrictions, which in turn is affected by water pollution, and other economic factors. The result of this element identification and interconnection process, which took approximately two hours to complete, constituted the system thinking (or group mental model) that represented how this particular group of workshop participants (Figure 4) collectively viewed the causal pathways between elements of their system. It also enable, via closer inspection, where possible conflict points existed within their system.

Figure 4: Results of the group conceptualization process in NYC, September 2014.

ClimateChange

Food Web BP Function Sea SurfaceTemperature

Ocean CO2Ocean

Acidification Water quality Water Pollution Algae Blooms

CHANGING OCEANS ANDINDUSTRY FUTURES: How willchanges to the ocean affect ocean

business?

Fishing activities

Redistributeeffort toavailableresources

Food availableto lobster and

other resources

Other Environmental Variations/

Cycles

Move to otheractivities

Different peoplewill stay somepeople will exit

Learn aboutwhat is

happening andhow to adapt

Tourism

Coral reefs

Diving

Save coral reefsor build new one

Find othertourism activities

Different tourism

Composition ofspecies

Ecosystem ischanging

Different sectorsare affected

Competition onOcean Space

use

Difficult to workbetween sectors

Multisector toolsand solutions are

needed

Decision makingtool

Based onScience

Data availableStakeholdersparticipation

(data,knowledge, etc.)

Whales

Storms

Shipping

Ice melting

New technology

Area Restrictions

After a while,cleaner industry

Employment

Companiesmore involved

on science

Moreinvolvement onpolicy making

Energy(renewable) vs.

Food

Researchproject (crab vs

energy)

Private effortsbetween sectorsto work together

Oil and Gas vsFisheries

Fisheries arerestructuring

Industries arebecoming

precautionary

Effects onCommunity

Migration tobigger cities

Looking forjob/educationopportunities

People awayfrom coastal

activities

Shelfish sector

Changepractices inhatcheries

Move Facilitiesto other places

Jobs

Markets

Biodiversity

Birds

Food supply inlocal

communities

Other birds

Food web (fish!)

Example: Iceland

Other economicfactors

Governmentresponses

Industryresponses

Protected Areas

Closing fishingareasInvolvement in

regulationsFlexibility ofregulations

Willingness toregulate

Higher cost

Bilateral negotiation between sectors (shipping+fis

hing)

Young peopleleave original

areas

Sea level rise

Small communities havemore difficulties to

adapt

Migrationpolicies,

decentralization,etc.

This process was then followed by identification of a ‘priority issue’ from the group mental model (Figure 4) for further investigation using Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) modeling. This is the issue that the participants involved in the workshop felt was most important and is often identified through which element in the mental model had the most connections. The priority issue selected by the stakeholders was “Decision Making Process ”.

This was in line with the findings in the conceptual model (figure 4). When we look at the model, we see that two variable appear to have the most arrows coming in to it, namely "Decision making tool" and "Fishing Activities" (figures 5 and 6), the former of which inspired the choice of priority issue for the stakeholders.

Figure 5: Variables directly and (indirectly) affecting the variable "Fishing activities".

Figure 6: Variables directly and (indirectly) affecting the variable "Decision making tool"

We use BBN modeling because it is well–suited at representing causal relationships between variables1 in

1 Variables are objects, elements or attributes that can change e.g. temperature is a variable because it has different values; the colour of a car (red, green, white etc) is another example of a variable.

the context of variability, uncertainty and subjectivity. They have demonstrated ability in utilizing subjective expert opinions to both derive the structure of, and variables within, a BBN (Uusitalo 2007, Richards et al. 2013).BBN modeling also provides a mechanism, via the underlying probabilistic framework of Bayes theorem, to integrate social, economic and environmental variables within a single model (Kjærulff and Madsen 2008). In terms of evaluating the relationships between the impacts of drivers from climatic and non-climatic stressors and socially driven adaptation to the consequences thereof, this attribute enables the variables that represent system determinants or stressors (e.g. the 8 pre-determined stressors) to be linked emphatically with other variables (e.g. adaptive capacity, political will).

The framework for developing a BBN around the selected priority issue was presented to the workshop participants. As a group, they were first instructed to assign two (dichotomous) states to their priority issue, “ Decision Making Process ”, as a means of discretizing this variable. The workshop facilitator guided the participants on the selection of these states including informing them that they had to be discrete states (as opposed to continuous), mutually exclusive (only one state can be true at any given time) and that the states be exhaustive (all potential outcomes are covered by the states). These rules are fundamental tenets of BBN development (Marcot et al. 2006).

The selection of dichotomous states entails that these are often broad qualitative descriptions. Conversely, restriction to dichotomous states enhances the tractability of the associated conditional probability tables (described elsewhere), which can otherwise be a serious impediment in BBNs that rely heavily on expert elicitation to parameterize them (Kjaerulff and Madsen 2008). Further guidance on the selection of the dichotomous states was provided in that they should reflect a desirable and undesirable state respectively. Often, the stakeholders select states of “high” and “low” or “good” and “bad” for the variable. For the variable “ Decision Making Process ” (i.e. the priority issue), the states chosen were “support a healthy and productive ocean (HPO)” and “not support a healthy and productive ocean (HPO)”. In the next step of the BBN development process, the stakeholders were asked to identify up to three primary variables that would directly influence their capacity to manage their priority issue at their desirable state (i.e. Decision Making Process = “support a healthy and productive ocean (HPO)”).

The priority issue and the three primary variables along with their respective states were then put up on Excel and projected on to the board, so that the stakeholders at all times could see what they were deciding upon in unison. This was helpful when the second level of causality (secondary variables) in the developing BBN diagram was created. This process required that they assign up to three variables for each of the three primary variables, based on the concept that these secondary variables directly influenced the primary variables. The participants assigned dichotomous states to each of the secondary variables in a similar manner as for the priority issue and the primary level variables. The resulting BBN structure is shown in Figure 5.

As introduced earlier, the Bayes theory is used to quantify the strength of the relationships between the variables in a BBN. To achieve this, the stakeholders were required to ‘populate’ (assign probabilities) to a set of conditional probability tables (CPTs), with one CPT required for each variable (also termed the child node in BBN nomenclature) that is directly influenced by at least one other variable (also termed a parent node). In the BBN developed using the approach outlined here, four CPTs were required. The process of populating the CPTs was achieved by asking the stakeholders to assign the probabilities of observing particular outcomes for a child variable given a combination of states (a BBN scenario) for the parent(s) variables that directly influence it (i.e. a ‘conditional’ probability). We used the expert opinions of

the individual stakeholders to provide these probabilities (i.e. each stakeholder independently provided their own set of probabilities for the CPTs).

The populated CPTs produced by each of the stakeholders were then combined into a single BBN model through the inclusion of an auxiliary variable (called 'Stakeholders' – refer Figure 7 and the variable located at the top-right corner) that represents the weighted input of each stakeholder (Kjaerulff and Madsen 2008). In our study, each stakeholder was weighted equally entailing that the opinions of each of the stakeholders were viewed as equal. The secondary variables, which had no other variables influencing them in the BBN (also termed stem nodes), were assigned probabilities of 50% for each of the two states.

The results indicate that, based on the combined beliefs of the stakeholders (all CPTs included via the auxiliary node) and assigning 50% probabilities to the stem nodes, the combined perception of the groups was that they considered it a 35.2% chance that a future decision making process, in light of a changing climate, that would support a healthy and productive ocean.

GovernanceGoodBad

35.464.6

Stakeholder OwnershipYesNo

42.157.9

KnowledgeAvailableNot available

48.351.7

CommunityShare knowledgeNot share knowledge

50.050.0

ScienceShare knowledgeNot share knowledge

50.050.0

Political SupportYesNo

50.050.0

InclusiveYesNo

50.050.0

RelevanceSignificantNot significant

50.050.0

Accountable and TransparentyesNo

50.050.0

InvolvementYesNo

50.050.0

SupportYesNo

50.050.0

Decison Making ProcessSupport HPONot support HPO

35.264.8

Industry and BusinessShare knowledgeNot share knowledge

50.050.0

StakeholderStakeholder 1Stakeholder 2Stakeholder 3

33.333.333.3

3.4 Conclusion Ocean Certain was the only EU project represented at the WOC business forum both though presence at the meetings and discussions but also more actively through the workshop organized. The feedback provided by the stakeholders as well as the information gathered during the subsequent meeting are expected to be very valuable in fulfilling task 4.2 and for the continued process in other workpackages. Additionally, WP5 – Decision Support System – was able to obtain valuable information with regards to the workings of the mock up system they had prepared to demonstrate to the participants. VITO was also able to gain contacts directly with stakeholders and are currently already in the process of getting more information about what precisely it is that the stakeholders need from such a system. Given that their priority issue was precisely decision making process, and that this was something that was highlighted in the system conceptualization models as well, we are convinced that our approach is precisely in line with the wishes of the stakeholders affected by climate change and the effects of climatic and non-climatic stressors on the food web and the biological pump.

4. Dissemination & exploitation The presence of Ocean Certain in the business forum provided partners with information that is important to the success of the project. Moreover involved partners obtained insights into the concerns and issues that businesses face as well as the practical challenges to implementing science into policy. To summarize these insights the industry feels the need for more information from scientists and wish to be more involved in the decision making processes in many cases this means having access to them or being informed about them. Science on the other hand needs also to be documented, objective and reported no matter what the results are. It was apparent in the workshop that the science-policy and business interfaces are making efforts to communicate and exchange information more. Presence in the business forum underlined the projects commitment to engaging with stakeholders and achieving this goal formed a good basis for the continued success of this goal. Attachments:

1) Program 2) Press release 3) Presentations from Ocean Certain representatives

3035 Hibiscus Drive, Suite 1, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 96815

Mobile: +1 (808) 277-9008

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.OceanCouncil.org

Changing oceans and industry futures

Food webs, the biological pump & business

Most organisms either harvest energy and produce organic matter through photosynthesis, or feed on organic matter produced by photosynthesis

Organic matter that is not decomposed fast remains in the system as forest an soils , peat, etc

At sea productivity is much higher than on land BUT it comes from much smaller organisms. Excess organic matter is not stored in equivalent forests, rather it is buried in the deep sea and sediments

This nutrient cycling is linked to three basic branches of oceanography: Biological , Chemical and Physical

Bare essentials- Marine nutrient cycling

Phytoplankton

Bacterioplankton

Flagellates

Fish

Biology- How productivity works

Marine snow

Zooplankton

Ciliates

Production

Sediments- Sink controls atmospheric CO2

Ocean surface interface with atmosphere & land

Chemistry- How the pump works

Euphotic zone supports fisheries productivity

C in Gigatones y-1

C storage

C cycling

This system absorbs, recycles and stores atmospheric CO2 50% in pre-industrial times 30% since industrialisation

Deep sea decomposition & upwelling

Physics- A dynamic environment

Ocean circulation means vertical transport varies, as does upwelling

Physics are connected to:

productivity

distribution

food web functioning

Surface chlorophyll as seen from space (SeaWifs satellite)

Given sufficient time the marine food web and biological pump move to equilibrium:

Imports= Exports

BUT currently it appears imports> exports

Risks of FW-BP disturbance

Main threat is decreased efficiency Can result from changes in biology, chemistry

& physics

smaller plankton =

less export

larger & more plankton

= more export

more decomposition =

deoxygenation =

less upwelling

less Carbon storage

ADDED problem: As the sinking cycle takes many years there are inherent uncertainties in carbon

uptake estimates

Ecosystem services

Also directly connected to Biodiversity and Food production

“An adequate and balanced supply of elements necessary for life, provided through the ecological processes of nutrient cycling, underpins all other ecosystem services”

A public good

Value connects to cost of jeopardizing

service

FW-BP connects to...

Cultural services

Scientific value

Regulating services

Climate regulation

Nutrient cycling Primary production Su

ppor

ting

serv

ices

Modified from de Groot et al. 2012

$/ ha/ y-1

Pacific ocean surface is ~165 trillion ha

Potential effects

Driver

Direct-Industry

Indirect- Global change

By products

Effects

Community structure ±

Eutrophication +

Alien species?

Oil spills +

Litter, nanoparticles

Temperature+

Stratification +

Ice melting +

Organic matter +

Industry affected

Fisheries ±,

Tourism –

Recreation ±

Shipping +

Oil industry+

Fisheries ±,

Shipping –

Recreation ±

Tourism -

Feedbacks

Jellyfish +

Productivity +

Regime shift

Habitats loss

Bloom occurence +

Oxygen -

Upwelling-

Circulation ±

Productivity +0

What’s next?

Different people have different perceptions about the same thing

Scientists can’t decide on their own how changing oceans may affect society and industry futures

Ultimately a case of Proactive vs Reactive Ecosystem Management

Challenges to policy + integrated management

At the moment north atlantic appears to be area where BP is most active

The BP and marine food webs do no fall within political boundaries, EEZ and national jurisdictions

Global organsations are calling for cross cutting measures to preserve biodiversity and natural processes in the oceans

Are initiatives like Galway helpful

This part of the ocean is also most heavily exploited

Does tis imply understanding of the importance of FWs and the BP

No single effect is global & uniform Different areas will have different responses

Difficult to communicate global aspect and anticipate changes over large areas

Final reflections The importance of the biological pump is already an issue for leading global organisations UNEP, FAO, UNESCO- IOC

Guidelines such as the IFC (World bank) performance standards are gaining momentum as an emerging regulatory framework for minimizing both corporate and environmental risks

It is also the research target of both EU and NSF funding as well as a dfocus point for Scientific organisations suches as PICES, ICES, OOI

Risks marine industries need to take into account: - Losses from damaging ecosystem services provided by bp & fw - Losses from non-compliance with environmental policy and regulatory frameworks - Internal losses (from changed conditions)

This is a simplified version- What do YOU think?

27/09/2014 1 © 2013, VITO NV

Ocean Food web Patrol – Climate Effects: Reducing Targeted Uncertainties with an Interactive Network

Decision Support - Matching Science and Policy

Jean-Luc de Kok - Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO)

Russell Richards (Griffith Univ.), Jennifer Bailey (NTNU),

Hugo Salgado (Utalca), Rachel Tiller (NTNU), Guy Engelen (VITO)

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Expert Systems

Decision-Support Systems

Integrated Modelling

Policy Support Systems

Web-based Support, Open Access

Decision-Support Systems (DSS) history

1970s

1980s

early 1990s

late 1990s

2000 +

bridging gap between

science and policy

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results for end–user

end–user control (front end)

System Dynamics Model

selection case study

Fossile Fuel Use (IPCC scenario)

Fishing effort

CO2 storage, .. (gridded maps)

qualitative storylines

Vulnerability Selected indicators 2015-2200

(time series)

Land Runoff

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Useful functionalities :

visualization of scenarios and policy options

analysis of system at high level of abstraction

communication support

Main lesson: keep it simple

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What we need to know from you:

which purpose could a DSS serve?

time horizon

legal underpinning

need for threshold information?

how to visualize (graphs, maps, etc) ?

anything else ?

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-0.3

+ 0.9

Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (Kosko, 1986) – “rapid” modelling

A B

C D

E

+ 1.0

+ 0.1

+ 0.3

+ 0.8

-0.7

-0.5

-0.4

Application domains: politics, energy, ecology, economics, business networks, fisheries, agriculture, politics, history, manufacturing, IT project management, disaster planning, predesign of DSS …

weakening

reinforcing

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FCM with feedback for conflict catch fisheries vs fish farming

adapted Tiller et al., 2013

Weight strength:

± 0.2 low

± 0.5 medium

± 0.7 high

+ +

+

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Scenario – fishing effort remains high, no climate change

high

low

normal

transient phase equilibrium phase

fish stock

declines

iteration step

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A. climate change + sustained fishing effort

B. climate change + decreasing fishing effort stronger cyclic behavior

Scenario comparison:

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Strengths :

simple arithmetics and transparency

no limitations to domain, including “soft” domains

consideration of system feedback

FCMs can be combined

but: choice + interpretation of variables, weights and initial states need to be assigned carefully, results verified and discussed

ocean certain fp7-env-2013.6.1-1 project number 603773...

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