NAMA’s Director, Niaz Dorry, will be joining an exciting and profound panel to speak about how we can better protect our ocean commons. If you are in the NYC area please join us for this event free and open to the pulblic. The event is hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – New York Office.
NAMA’s Director, Niaz Dorry, will be joining an exciting and profound panel to speak about how we can better protect our ocean commons. If you are in the NYC area please join us for this event free and open to the pulblic. The event is hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – New York Office.
The ocean may be the ultimate commons. For those of us who live on land, the ocean seems like an endless hoirzon. It is both the edge of settled existence and a source of apparently limitless resources. The ocean is both ecologically central and the site of an enormous amount of human activity.
Like other commons, the ocean is threatened by abuse, enclosure, and commercialization. Powerful corporate interests seek to privatize the seas. Overfishing has led to the collapse of fisheries, devastated biodiversity, and undermined the livelihoods of fisher communities. We have treated the ocean as the world’s largest garbage dump and pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to acidify the oceans and warm the entire planet. Fossil fuel companies have advanced an extreme energy agenda, drilling for oil in ever more hazardous and sensitive environments, with predictable ecological and social consequences.
We face a fundamental choice in our species’ relationship with the ocean: will we choose to live in a truly sustainable manner that strengthens our communities while protecting the environment or we will continue to allow the powerful to extract wealth from the ocean, devastating the environment, fraying social ties, and ultimately threatening human civilization.
“Planet of the Ocean” brings together researchers, journalists, and activists to consider how human society impacts the ocean, how it impacts us, and how we can work together to restore and protect our last great commons.
Speakers incldue:
- Niaz Dorry, Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance
- David Helvarg, Blue Frontier Campaign
- Jonathan HEnderson, Gulf Restoration Network
- John Hocevar, Greenpeace
- Naseegh Jaffer, World Forum of Fisher Peoples
- Max Liboiron, Memorial University of Newfoundland
- Seth Macinko, The University of Rhode Island
- Elizabeth Nussbaumer, Food and Water Watch
- Daniel Pauly, University of British Columbia
- Anastasia Romanou, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
- Brendan Smith, GreenWave
- Chris Williams, author: Ecology and Socialism
- Maria Carolina Romero, World Maritime University