Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (ICP26)

This afternoon, we will continue our discussions under the second segment of the discussion panel entitled Enabling and Enhancing Marine Ecosystem Restoration International Cooperation and Coordination Challenges and Opportunities.
There are six presentations scheduled for this afternoon.
We intend to hear from the first free panelists followed by a question and answer session before proceeding with the remaining free panelists.
We again wish to remind you that the discussions in the panel are informal.
In order to allow delegations from states, intergovernmental, and non governmental organizations to participate actively in the debate.
All panel presentations have been posted on the website of the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea to assist delegations in preparing for discussions.
As these panels are also being broadcast over United Nations web TV, we are also accepting questions from remote viewers.
Please email any questions and comments to Dualos at un.org.
I now wish to give the floor to our first panelist, Kim Friedman, FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division Ecosystem Restoration Focal Point.
The presentation is entitled Fisheries in Marine Ecosystem Restoration, the FAO, Una Acade of Ecosystem Restoration, and Target two of the Coming Moral Global Biodiversity Framework.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, co chairs and good afternoon all and distinguished guests and fellow panelists.
I see that I've luckily selected for the after lunch food coma slot and I promise to not put too much text on the slides to try and keep this talk moving.
The global community is getting more concerned about the state of nature, the planet's biodiversity bank account.
This is happening at the very time that decades of improvement in food security have been reversed.
FAO monitoring shows that food insecurity is persisting since a reversal in the trend starting around 2014.
Just to give you an idea, we also have long term trends on the status of fish stocks and here we can see a slow decline in the amount of biologically sustainable fishing and an increase in unsustainable fishing, although at least above 70% of stocks by volume is taken sustainably.
Let's look now at how fisheries fares in global environmental processes, be it the KMGBF or the ecosystem restoration decade, which is a UN process.
All of these come, let's say, under the umbrella of the SDGs, but focused on multilateral environment agreements, Target two, obviously very important as a focusing mechanism for countries to think about restoration.
And flowing from that, we've seen in previous talks, especially Rory O'Leary pointed out that the wide range of initiatives which are trying to boost ecosystem restoration.
We can think of the UN decade, we can think of the European Union's nature Restoration laws.
We can think of the efforts on increasing blue carbon understanding and such like.
FAO has a strategy for ecosystem restoration and a good roadmap plan.
FAO being a food and hunger mandate, we're really trying to twin environmental protection with sustainable management.
We have documents that outline how we're getting to 2030 and how we will play our role within the UN system to help assist countries in their ecosystem restoration efforts.
The question you might pose is are fisheries interested? Are the fisheries players interested in ecosystem restoration? I've had the opportunity in my role from the desk that I work from to spend many meetings working with countries and working with experts to talk within fisheries about how they can play a role in ecosystem restoration.
I just want to feedback and overall signal that In all the meetings I've run, these are some of the most engaged meetings I've had.
They go after hours, people stay back.
There's a lot of interest within the fisheries community and ecosystem restoration.
I think this is a great umbrella program for not just fisheries and productive sectors, but also for people who are focused on biodiversity protection.
What's coming back to me as an overall signal, I'm calling it the four Rs, is that fisheries recognize they need to reframe some of the ways they speak about ecosystem restoration in that fisheries rather does fish stock rebuilding and so on.
Some of the ways that we speak about restoration is different.
And we need to reframe it so that we get a common language about what we're doing and how we're contributing.
Secondly, fisheries people are looking for greater representation in the discussions about how restoration will be rolled out.
They're looking for recognition in the efforts they've put in place to recover both the habitats and the fish stocks that are of interest.
They're also looking to play their part in accessing the resources that are put aside by the global community for doing restoration.
Let's talk a little bit about fisheries and restoration.
We did a study to look across all the CBDs national biodiversity strategies and action plans to try and understand how that broke out into different criteria or different groups of focus.
We did this with text analysis with the new tools that we got through AI and such like and we published this data, so there's the paper.
But what we did find in all the plans that have been written for the delivery of biodiversity conservation through the CBD ten year plan was that In the words that were most of focus in these plans, we're thinking about things like forest, flora, fauna, environment, protection and these were central to the word cloud that develops when you do a text analysis.
However, if you look on the top where the red arrow is and the bottom where the red arrow is, we're seeing that productive sectors aren't central to the conversation that's being had about biodiversity conservation.
This is a problem for fisheries.
Fish and fishing hardly is well connected in the overall thinking behind biodiversity conservation.
We saw this not only for inland countries and coastal countries, but even for island countries.
I think I'll try and explain why this is happening and this almost like a marginalization of fishing and agriculture communities, although when the conversation is happening within these MEAs, they recognize their important role in delivering both pressures on the environment, but also potentially a role in helping the processes for conservation.
Also in FAR, have been looking through scientific papers.
This is just 639, but we had another 8,000 abstracts.
What we're seeing when we look at documentation of what's happening in restoration that it's largely dominated, if you look on your right, the blue part of that circle is all terrestrial focus.
There's very little focus at the moment on marine, which is in purple.
When we looked at 80, which is a project analysis of all the projects which have been documented, we're getting the same type of ecosystem focus.
The analysis reveals that there's a strong dominance of terrestrial ecosystems When you compare this with marine and freshwater ecosystems, when we think about ecosystem restoration.
This focus is really looking at how people speak about ecosystem restoration.
It gives you also the opportunity not just to look at the environments where this is happening, but we can look geographical area.
We can look at restoration approaches through this type of evidence based understanding of where restoration is being delivered.
It's important signal to know that the marine restoration is not a central focus when we're thinking about ecosystem restoration.
What can we do about that to make that more central to people's interests and investments? This is just a slide giving you a bit of a breakdown and the little slither at the top is marine.
We can start to understand where we need to be and what's being invested in.
How is FAO elevating understanding on marine restoration? Well, firstly, we're working across the productive sectors to speak to them about the 23 targets of the CBD KMGBF.
To be honest, it's a bit of a struggle.
Even though we're writing up the stories that we're hearing and trying to build community.
When you do walk in on a group of interested parties from fisheries, we have to break down the 23 targets and it's very hard to tell people a 23 element story, especially when each of these elements is multidimensional and often cross cutting.
So there's a challenge here in designing frameworks that really speak to people who aren't central to this endeavor and bring them into the house that is this framework that we're trying to deliver, not just for fisheries people, but for biodiversity more generally.
The Marine and ecosystem restoration working group.
This is a working group run by FAO where we've got 50 plus marine and coastal habitat experts and we're trying to work to understand a common vision of what will be the indicator, what countries will actually record when they do ecosystem restoration because at the moment, the headline indicate is area under restoration, which is just a quantitative size measure.
It doesn't tell you much about the success or otherwise.
In producing this common vision, a couple of key discussion points have come up in regards to the comparison between marine systems and terrestrial systems.
The first discussion point is that typically underwater, we're getting a mosaic of different habitats that's not so delineated, so it's quite difficult to know exactly where you're going to put the lines on the map to decide where your active restoration is happening.
The second question that they're trying to harmonize Is the understanding for reporting where you do a direct intervention or where you do a description of where the impact of that restoration was? For example, if you removed a wear from an estuary, you wouldn't just say that's a 15 square meter change because obviously the water flow now is changing completely and affecting both the estuary and the coastal water.
How do we report on area under restoration under the CBD in a harmonized fashion so that we're all speaking the same language? Some other progress we can talk about is that FAO and UIP, we have a framework for reporting on monitoring which hopefully with more and more stories will allow more and more sharing of the successes and problems we're having in restoration, which will be available to people so that they don't necessarily get isolated in just their small project.
One of the issues we're having is that we're getting a lot of reporting, but it's largely terrestrial and we need to focus more on encouraging people doing restoration in aquatic systems to report against the firm.
It's obviously it's free, it's open to anyone anytime.
We also have a restoration progress report which is being written at the moment.
That's FAA UIP and the CBD are writing that report and that will be available for you shortly to show progress that's happening.
I just want to give you one FAO example of a more people centered marine restoration program.
This is happening in Vanawatu where the recovery of high value sea cucumbers through their hatchery rearing, and release ranching into seagrass meadows is increasing not just the incomes to communities, but is increasing the health of those seagrass meadows in that there's published literature shows the seagrass can increase growth plus 20% for about seagrass meadows.
There's a program here where twinning restoration with incomes for people so that when the project finishes, there's an opportunity for this to continue.
I just want to leave you with a few big picture outlook ideas on the priorities and opportunities under marine restoration.
The first one is if we're thinking about animals in the environment when we're thinking about biodiversity, basically they're mostly marine, 78%, they're going to be marine when we talk about biomass.
If we're thinking about biodiversity, we should really just be thinking about fish and other things.
Because fish make up 59% of the weight of animal life on the planet.
If you look very carefully at the right hand side of this slide, you'll see humans down there at about five and wild animals terrestrial at about 0.5%.
Really, when we're thinking about marine systems, we really need to think about the functioning and diversity of a full suite of fishes and those are not just swimming fishes, but also invertebrates and so on that are on the benthos.
The second big picture highlight is that the best way for us to deliver biodiversity gains and wins is with the people and industries that depend on biodiversity.
Here if you look on the right, you'll notice that the areas under use in blue make up by far the most area that we're going to be working on to deliver ecosystem restoration.
Even marginal gains working with productive sectors are likely to have an aggregate influence far greater than if we just go with protection alone.
We need both, but we really do need productive sectors, changing the way that they work and the way that they depend on these resources so that they can deliver as partnering in the role of bringing biodiversity mainstreaming across all of the community.
Lastly, one of the big picture questions we have to think about is equitable access to funds.
Because when we think about biodiversity, if we think about the Jeff, which Nicola was speaking about earlier and also Mexico in their discussion during the post speech about fragmentation of authorities.
Even David Smith, what we're finding is that the money and finances and discussion that's happening around biodiversity conservation is coming through the JeF and CBD.
Now, if you look at the, the GBFF focal point, which deals with the funds coming out of Jeff, they sit within environment ministries.
If you're talking about the CBD, the national focal point for the CBD sits within the environment ministries.
We have to think carefully how we can get the other ministries involved, how they're not somehow finding themselves on the outside of the building when we need to have discussions about what we should invest in.
And this is an important element because if fisheries aren't recognized and they aren't resourced, we're not going to get the benefits that they can deliver for ecosystem restoration.
It's not just fisheries, it's all the productive sectors.
This is a fundamental process problem that could marginalize the wins that we can get through productive sectors.
And my last slide is just to have another go at trying to uplift restoration in marine systems.
We just need to upgrade the fisheries profile in restoration.
Fisheries are seen as central partners in biodiversity conservation in the GBF.
Fisheries need to deliver strong more unified messages on who they are and what they can deliver.
And fish are ecosystem engineers.
Recovery is achievable at scale.
We've heard about this during these talks from the GFCM results, which just in the last few years they've done well.
The US ground fish, which was declared a federal disaster in 2000 is now completely recovered.
The bluefin tunas have recovered, the herring, we're talking about tens of millions of tons of fish have recovered through fish rebuilding programs and fisheries rebuilding programs.
These are all effective for both ecological and economic recovery.
There's a great twinning there of the things that not only work for people but work for environment.
We need to simplify and tell better stories about wise use, about sustainable use in restoration.
That must include mobile species.
It must not just be the habitats when we think about restoration.
We have to think about the whole package and how people interact with that.
And lastly, we need to increase the presence of the productive sectors in the meetings that MEAs are holding their voices are at the table when decisions are made about what to do next and how to adapt and work forward to deliver in the restoration that we're all after.
So thank you very much.
I thank Mr.
Friedman for his presentation, and I give the floor to our second panelist, Shanel Rayner, coordinator Ecosystems National Environment and Planning Agency of Jamaica and the presentation is entitled Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Jamaica, Enabling and Enhancing Marine Ecosystem Restoration through International Cooperation and Coordination, Challenges and Opportunities and the Way Forward.
You have the floor.
Distinguished delegates, co chairs, fellow panelists, good afternoon.
I am the coordinator for ecosystems at the National Environment and Planning Agency.
NepO is the chief regulatory body for environment and Planning issues in Jamaica.
Today, I will be giving an overview of marine ecosystem restoration in Jamaica, the existing frameworks that support it, and some of the challenges.
When we speak of marine ecosystem restoration, we're referring to any activity that improves ecosystem services and biodiversity, whether via passive engagement, such as a coral nursery, rather active via coral nurses or passive being the designation of protected areas that support restoration activities.
In Jamaica, coral reefs and wetlands are the focal point for ecosystem restoration with limited application to seagrass beds.
This is a virtue of the quantity and quality of data that exists for coral reef and wetland restoration, which includes our coral reef health index monitoring program, which focuses on four key indicators, hard coral cov, macro algal cove and fish biomass of herbivorous and commercially important fish.
With this protocol, we're able to develop a ranking system from very good to critical and this allows us to track reef status and health between various marine protected areas and virtually to implement adaptive strategies for coral reef management.
The monitoring is conducted every three years, and in 2023, during our last assessment, majority of our reefs were ranked as critical.
This represents a decrease in or ranking relative to our baseline, which was poor.
Like other Caribbean nations, we're all well aware of the impacts to coral reefs and what factors influence our coral coal versus macro agate coals.
I won't go into detail in that.
To add to our coral reef health monitoring program, we also conduct sea surface temperature across 27 sites across the island.
This data has been used to validate No's bleaching alert model for the Caribbean region.
Trends that have emerged from the dataset also shows that Jamaica's warming period is between August to October.
What this has allowed us to do as a regulator is to make recommendations to avoid specific activities throughout the year that may add additional stress to corals, such as coral relocation in development projects.
There are many frameworks nationally and internationally that exist relating to marine restoration.
Implementation is sometimes fragmented nationally and regionally.
International frameworks such as comun Montreal Global Diversity framework, and the UN Decade of ecosystem restoration set the tone and unify targets and initiatives at the global and national scale.
At the national level, legislation like the Wildlife Protection Act, the Beach Control Act, and the various legislations that provide for the designation of protected areas provide the legal basis for environmental protection and regulation.
This enables effective management and enforcement actions that support restoration efforts.
Jamaica's action plan for corals and reefs provides a strategic direction for coral restoration and management, and it helps move the needle from isolated projects to more coordinated national programs.
Our National ecosystem restoration Plan is Jamaica's way of addressing target two of the GBF and this document is a roadmap for all restoration activities across four different ecosystem types for the next ten years.
There is a bias towards coral restoration, but we haven't forgotten about seagrass.
Most recently, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee partnered with the government of Jamaica to develop a regional seagrass restoration guidelines.
This is just one step in moving the needle towards having robust seagrass restoration take place.
Together, these frameworks and plans illustrate how restoration is enabled through a combination of legislation, strategic planning, technical guidance, and partnerships across multiple scales of governance.
Why does marine restoration require international cooperation? Marine ecosystems cross political boundaries and shared threats require shared solutions.
The benefits of restoration do not stop at natural boundaries.
However, restoring ecosystems in one country can contribute to the health and productivity of marine resources shared across the wider Caribbean.
Cooperation improves access to funding, builds investor confidence and enables large scale projects that can have meaningful impacts regionally and globally.
Some of the challenges surrounding marine restoration extends to the cost.
Marine restoration is expensive and requires long term investment.
International cooperation has assisted Jamaica with access to development assistance and targeted multilateral environmental funds.
While policy and institutional frameworks continue to strengthen, there are some capacity constraints as it relates to long term monitoring, enforcement, and scaling restoration efforts.
An increase in weather events such as hurricanes and coral bleaching also undermine restoration gains, highlighting the need for incorporating climate smart adaptive methods, such as switching from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction and also broader climate action.
Earlier this morning, it would have been mentioned that the coral reaching events of 2023 would have wiped out several coral colonies within the Caribbean and Jamaica had experienced the same thing where a lot of the projects that were implemented have now died, and to from asexual reproduction, Jamaica has initiated a mapping exercise to determine where our remaining corals are.
Some of the concerns relating to moving corals across parish boundaries is due to a lack of quarantine and biosecurity protocols amongst our marine protected area managers because it's very important to us that we're not introducing any new risk while we're conducting our coral conservation.
But we're learning and changing how projects are being implemented to solve impacts beyond the direct project area.
One such example Pardon me.
On screen are the mapping results from our mapping exercise where marine protected areas have been engaged by the government to look within our management area where the corals exist, what species exist, and what their conditions are so that these corals can be targeted for future conservation work where we'll be conducting sexual reproduction mechanisms.
It's an interest in increasing the biodiversity on our coral reefs.
A case study of international collaboration on how that has improved technical capacity within Jamaica is the Coral Care Project, which is implemented by the Nature Conservancy, regionally and locally in Jamaica, it is implemented by the Alligator Head Foundation.
Some of the key contributions of the project include the development of a spawning calendar for the project area, which is the East Portland fish sanctuary and through workshops regarding assisted fertilization and calculated a spawning calendar.
All MPA managers across the island have been engaged and are now equipped with the expertise to determine the spawning calendar for their specific site and to collect spawn material and fertilize either via direct release or having them in settlement transfer app.
This has positioned Jamaica to improve biodiversity beyond a specific project site.
International collaboration has also facilitated large strides in spatial conservation planning.
Tools such as the coral refusion map have identified and ranked key coral habitats across the island that are likely to survive impacts of climate change based on their location and future thermal conditions.
On the screen rather is the coral refusion map for Jamaica showing different ranking of coral reefs that are likely to survive different climatic conditions.
This is a good example of project scaling.
The use of data to support management strategies that can be used across the island and that can also be duplicated within the Caribbean region.
On screen is a ranking of the top 25% of reical sites for Jamaica and this data has been used for Jamaica to determine where is our next marine protected area going to be? What resources are in these refusal sites, and where's the best place to spend our next dollar.
Another example of project scaling is the use of larval dispersal across the island.
Through modeling, we are able to determine that coral spawn material released along the south coast of Jamaica will reach the pure ks, seen on the right side of Key, offshore.
Spaw material released on the south coast of Jamaica will reach psure ranks in four days.
This is significant because the pressure ranks is one of the fishing grounds that's shared by several countries in the Caribbean and for Jamaica, it is where we get majority of our GDP relating to fisheries.
In closing, be reminded that most successful restoration initiatives are those that are inclusive and supported by local stakeholders.
Whereas government provides policy direction, academia supports research and innovation, and private sector contributes to investment and can assist with scaling People always drive the energy behind the initiative.
Therefore, it's important to have adequate stakeholder collaborations in any type of project, especially those within the marine ecosystem.
With continued collaboration from the regional and local level, there is no limit to what can be achieved.
Together through cooperation and coordination, we can Restore marine ecosystems and secure sustainable future for all.
Thank you.
Thank you, miss Rayna, for your presentation.
We will now hear from the third panelist, Veronica Caceres, secretary of the Inter American Sea Turtle Convention.
They are unfortunately unable to be with us in person today, but have kindly recorded their presentation on strengthening marine ecosystem restoration, the role of the Inter American Convention for the Protection and conservation of sea turtles.
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Later mains The participant is the I would like to ask the Secretariat to convey our thanks to miss Caceres for this presentation.
We've now heard the first three panelists and we will pause our presentations to allow for questions and comments.
So may I invite you to ask any questions or make any comments on the first three presentations.
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I thank the distinguished representative of Venezuela and I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Iceland.
Thank you very much, co chair.
This is just unplanned, but perhaps a few reflections and a question.
Thank you to all the panelists.
Very interesting topics and discussions.
Again, it's sad that unfortunately, miss Cass is not here with us today.
It would have been fantastic if she was at least in an interactive mode online, but that's unfortunate, there's nothing to be asked there.
But just to comment on miss Reynas Very interesting to hear about the Coral Carib Project and the Caribbean biological Corridor.
Um, especially coming in after doctor One's Caribbean perspective this morning.
There was a good interplay there, and very interesting.
But perhaps onto a question doctor Friedman, it was very interesting to see the sheer icer tonnage of carbon, that fish have as a percentage of the total global biodiversity of the planet, and it really did put it into a stark contrast to maybe the efforts or, or even the public interest towards the topics of fish and fisheries.
In connection to that, you were talking about the 23 targets before 2030, which refers to the coming Montreal Global biodiversity Framework.
Un the same times we here are often talking about the SG, the 17 SDGs, which seem to be unfortunately off track to meet their target by 2030.
To have 23 targets before 2030, it will be interesting just to get I may have missed it, but how How otherwise how close are we or how far are we from reaching those 23 targets when it comes to fish and fisheries? That would be very interesting to hear if you have any perspectives on that.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Iceland and I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Belgium.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Co chair, and also thank you to the panelists for the interesting presentations.
I had a specific question for Mr.
Friedman as well.
I was wondering if you could tell a bit more about the firm platform and the indicators that are being used because, of course, indicators are only as useful as everybody reporting in a similar way against them.
When I was digging little bit deeper, I saw in the report that there is a development of TRO indicators together with the Society for Ecological Restoration, with the aim to formalize a standard set of sector wide project indicators.
Whether you have an update on that since I think they will be very valuable and key in delivering also reporting, which is of course useful for Koming global bidiversity framework.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I now give the floor to panelist number ten, and there will you please introduce yourself first.
Hello, I'm Bruno de Piconi, I'm a marine biologist from Brazil.
My question is for Friedmn.
In Brazil, many traditional fishers can only receive closed season compensation from the governor if fishing is their solo source of income.
As a result, some fishers avoid participating in ecosystem restoration projects because they would lose the benefit.
This creates a paradox.
People who could be contributing to conservation feel discouraged from doing this and in some cases, it can even encourage informal and well reported arrangements.
How can we expect fishers to become restoration leaders if participation in restoration might jeopardize the various social protection mechanisms designed to protect them.
Have you seen similar situations in other countries? Are there policies solutions that can reconcile social protection schemes with participation in restoration activities? Thank you.
I now give the floor to the panelists for any response.
Thank you very much for the delegations to bring up some of the topics.
I think one of the roles of any agreement, be it binding or non binding is to sensitize the community and try and build cooperation around some targets which might be aspirational.
But I think we can look at, for example, under the SDGs, delivery for fisheries against the amount of investment that goes against that delivery and that conversation itself opens up an opportunity for people to think more clearly about adaptive management and where they might be able to leverage some of the good news stories to build community around the targets that are there even if they're not reached.
I also think that sensitization and cooperation is something that's happening more and more and hopefully more and more in a cooperative manner.
This is where some of the problems come in in that If you do have 23 targets and they delivered largely through delegations who come from one sectoral ministry, there is the possibility of looking across the documentation of even individual countries and find that there's a clash between the productive sector strategic plan and maybe the conservation plan of the same country.
And this is where speaking to the delegations, it's fantastic when we see a country turn up to both a multilateral environment agreement and a fisheries meeting, be it CFI with both people from the environment sector and from the fisheries sitting side by side and that's quite unusual.
But this type of sensitization and cooperation is what the firm's mandate is in that the Target under the CBD of area under conservation has potentially the ability of delivering unintended consequences.
In that single target, which just talks about area not delivery of biodiversity conservation, could incentivize more broad based delivery of a model to try to boost the area covered rather than where it's actually needed.
Equally, if you're looking at return on investment, and you just want area, why would you go to marine systems which might be more expensive in doing water on a smaller scale, water restoration.
There's a range of problems with very simplistic indicators and a firm encourages people not just to document their projects, but also document the area where they're working, put down some of their reports that they're writing on the successes or otherwise of their interventions, and start to hopefully build a community where someone in one country might look on the firm and see, quite nearby, someone's doing something similar to us.
Let's look at what they're doing.
Let's have a look at how they're reporting it.
Let's have a look if they're putting it into the National Statistics Department or if it's just being somehow lost, the information is being lost.
I think this is one of the key things about trying to stop some of the deagggregated governance models and try and bring people around the same campfire for the same conversation.
This is where the question from Brazil comes in that we have potentially some backfire situations happening when things aren't thought through or aren't delivered in a cooperative fashion.
We're seeing you asked for some similar examples where we're getting this type of backfire.
At the moment, we have a range of fisheries interventions which are starting to go into capture based aquariculture or ranching of species in the wild.
This is causing some problems if those species are somehow coming under some elevated level of governance control, say under sites, for example, an investor would look twice before they invested in hatchery rearing and rearing in the wild these species because they wouldn't necessarily be able to sell them without going through significant administrative hurdles.
Unfortunately, if we lose that product for the market, it puts more pressure on product in the wild, the very species we're trying to protect.
We've got to think more carefully about putting in a control which has a backfire effect on the actual conservation of the species.
When it comes to restoration, we've got to think more carefully about the indicators we choose to speak about because if it's purely area, We might have people working across broad forests, planting a few trees and saying a forest is now restored when actually what you've done is you've put in a little bit of canopy and the actual ecosystem itself is very little changed.
If not, potentially if it's a monoculture, may be made worse.
So I think the story about, are we reaching all the targets from Iceland? No, we're not.
I think we're getting more focused as a community to recognize the need to do that and for a country to maybe invest more where they see they're lagging behind because there's some inter countuntry or inter regional competition.
That can be helpful to bring people onto the same page.
The firm is a much more broad based recording of what's happening and that can be helpful because the single area under conservation measure under the CBD might not be enough to have a detailed conversation.
Yes, if we're going to have these disagggregated governance models, we must be very careful that what we put in to look after something in one place doesn't damage it in another.
Thank you.
Any questions? I think we've finished the list of speakers.
We will now proceed with the remaining three panelists for this afternoon.
I will now give the floor to our fourth panelist, Karina Barquet senior researcher and team lead Water, Coasts and Ocean, Stockholm Environment Institute.
They are unfortunately unable to be with us in person today, but have kindly recorded the presentation regarding marine ecosystem restoration in times of geopolitical change.
In fact, I ask the Secretariat to proceed with the presentation.
Good morning, distinguished delegates and colleagues.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion on marine ecosystem restoration.
My name is Karina Barquet.
I am a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI, where I lead our global work on oceans and biodiversity.
Much of my work focuses on coastal and marine ecosystems in both the Caribbean and the Baltic Sea.
Despite their many differences, these regions face a common challenge, restoring ecosystems that are shared across political boundaries and subject to multiple and often competing pressures.
Today, I would like to focus not only on the restoration challenge itself, but also on the conditions that make restoration possible.
Drawing on more than 50 years of regional cooperation in the Baltic Sea, I will explore what this experience can teach us about enabling and sustaining marine ecosystem restoration in an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape.
My central argument is straightforward.
Marine ecosystem restoration is not only an ecological challenge.
It is also a challenge of governance, cooperation, and long term institution building.
Marine ecosystems rarely align with political boundaries.
Fish stocks migrate across jurisdictions, pollution travels through connected marine systems.
Climate impacts cascade across regions, and what happens in one part of a sea can affect communities and ecosystems far beyond national borders.
At the same time, the oceans are governed through a complex patchwork of maritime jurisdictions.
Many maritime boundaries remain unresolved or contested.
Climate change is creating new governance challenges in regions such as the Arctic.
While sea level rise raises fundamental questions for vulnerable island states and maritime rights.
As a result, regional seas around the world face a dual challenge, restoring ecosystems while maintaining cooperation across increasingly complex and contested spaces.
Before digging into cooperation in the Baltic Sea, I would like to start with a simple and perhaps obvious observation.
Marine ecosystem restoration is often framed as a scientific or technical challenge.
We focus on ecological monitoring, restoration methods, and biodiversity assessments.
These elements are essential, but they are rarely sufficient on their own.
Restoration outcomes depend equally on institutions and cooperation.
Institutions provide the rules, the coordinating mechanisms, and continuity needed to sustain action over time.
Cooperation provides trust, dialogue, and a shared objective among actors that may have different interests and priorities.
This is particularly important in marine environments where ecosystems, pressures, and restoration benefits extend across political boundaries.
My argument today is that successful restoration occurs at the intersection of these three dimensions, ecological knowledge, institutions, and cooperation.
Marine restoration is also taking place in increasingly crowded and multi functional seascapes.
Today, marine areas are expected to simultaneously support biodiversity conservation, fisheries, shipping, offshore renewable energy, climate adaptation, tourism, and a range of other critical infrastructure expansions.
These uses often overlap geographically and may create tensions and trade offs.
What makes this particularly interesting is that many of these objectives are not independent from one another.
Offshore renewable energy can support climate mitigation and energy transitions, but it may also compete for marine space with fisheries.
Subsidy cables and energy infrastructure are essential for modern societies, but they have also become strategic assets that require protection.
Marine protected areas contribute to biodiversity goals, but they may overlap with economic interests or national development priorities.
In other words, marine governance is increasingly about managing interactions among multiple legitimate objectives rather than solving a single environmental problem.
For restoration initiatives, this means that ecological evidence remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient on its own.
Success increasingly depends on the ability to navigate trade offs, coordinate across sectors, and maintain cooperation among actors with different priorities.
The question is therefore no longer about how to restore ecosystems, but how to do so in ways that remain politically feasible and socially legitimate.
Research on environmental peacemaking offers useful insights into why environmental cooperation emerges and persists.
The starting point is often a shared environmental challenge.
Countries recognize that an ecological problems such as pollution, habitat degradation, or biodiversity loss crosses political borders and cannot be solved by any one country acting alone.
Countries recognize this shared challenge, they may also begin to recognize mutual benefits from cooperation.
In the marine context, these benefits can include healthier ecosystems, more sustainable fisheries, safer maritime activities, and more resilient coastal communities.
But recognizing mutual benefits is not enough.
Cooperation requires institutions that create opportunities for repeated interaction.
For example, through conventions, working groups, joint monitoring programs, and scientific assessments, countries that meet regularly, exchange information, and coordinate action.
Over time, these repeated interactions can build trust and predictability.
Countries can become more confident that others will uphold commitments and continue participating in collective efforts.
This can eventually lead to what scholars call positive interdependence.
In simple terms, this means that countries understand that achieving their own environmental objectives depends on the actions of their neighbors and that cooperation is more effective than unilateral action.
When these conditions are present, cooperation can become durable over time and support long term environmental protection and restoration.
Importantly, environmental cooperation doesn't automatically create peace or prevent conflict, but under favorable political conditions, it can create habits of cooperation and maintain channels for dialogue that remain valuable even during periods of broader geopolitical tension as the Baltic Sea is experiencing now.
As I will discuss in the next slides, this provides a framework or a useful lens for understanding the evolution and resilience of outcome over the past five decades.
Halcob or the Helsinki Convention was signed in 1974 by all Baltic coastal states to address growing environmental pressures affecting the shared marine environment.
Helcob became one of the first comprehensive regional marine agreements to address pollution across an entire sea basin.
Importantly, it functioned throughout the Cold War, providing a platform for environmental cooperation despite broader political tensions between East and West.
This makes the Baltic Sea a valuable case for understanding how environmental cooperation can persist across changing geopolitical contexts.
When viewed through the lens of environmental peacemaking, several factors help explain outcomes durability.
First, the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea faced a shared environmental problem that no state could solve alone.
Second, cooperation generated mutual environmental and economic benefits.
Third, scientific exchange and joint monitoring created repeated interaction among experts and institutions.
A permanent Secretariat and stable governance structure provided continuity.
Over time, these repeated interactions contributed to trust building among participating actors.
Taken together, these conditions created a foundation for long term cooperation around the shared ecosystem.
I would argue that Halcomb's most important achievement may not be pollution reduction alone.
Its most enduring achievement may be the creation of what we can call a habit of cooperation.
Environmental cooperation between Finland and the Soviet Union began before Halcomb was formally established.
Halcob was then signed during the Cold War and following the end of the Cold War, the convention had to adapt to a new political landscape and managed to expand cooperation amongst the newly independent Baltic states.
Halcob continued to evolve through European integration.
Implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan, and more recently, how come is navigating through significant geopolitical disruptions.
What this history demonstrates is that environmental cooperation is not a single event.
It is a long term process built through repeated interaction, shared learning, and institutional continuity.
In many ways, the habit of cooperation becomes an asset in itself.
It creates relationships, routines, and expectations that help sustain cooperation even when political conditions become more difficult.
Restoration is not a one time intervention.
It often requires decades of coordinated action.
What HCO created was not only environmental improvements, but the institutional continuity needed for long term restoration.
Several broader lessons emerge from the Baltic experience.
First, science alone is insufficient.
It must be pair with institutions and cooperation.
Second, institutions matter.
Ad hoc agreements come and go, but durable institutions create continuity.
Third, trust takes time.
It is built through repeated interaction over many years.
Fourth, regional mechanisms matter.
Regional agreements are often better positioned to address ecosystem specific challenges than broader global frameworks.
Finally, resilience is possible.
Environmental cooperation can persist even amid geopolitical tensions when supported by strong institutions and shared interests.
Based on these lessons, I would like to put forward five priorities.
First, there's a need to recognize and strengthen regional seas conventions as engines of marine governance.
Second, invest in long term scientific cooperation and joint monitoring systems.
Halcom is far from the norm and many marine regions lack the institutional strength in the Baltic Sea.
Third, support scientific and institutional capacity development, particularly where resources are limited.
Fourth, design mechanisms that promote trust building and sustained dialogue over time.
Finally, integrate ecological restoration more explicitly within broader international cooperation and peace building objectives.
Let me conclude with one final reflection.
One lesson that stands out from the Baltic experience is that successful restoration depends not only on projects, technologies, or even funding mechanisms.
It depends on institutions and relationships.
Restoration can take decades before ecological improvements become visible.
Political priorities, however, can change within a few years, even months.
Institutions help bridge this gap.
They preserve knowledge, they maintain monitoring systems, create continuity across political cycles, and provide spaces where cooperation can continue even during periods of tension.
In many ways, the Baltic Sea demonstrates that restoration is not only about restoring ecosystems.
It is also about sustaining the institutions and relationships that make long term environmental action possible.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Feel free to reach out.
I would like to ask the Secretariat to pass on our things for this presentation.
Let us now turn to our fifth panelist this afternoon, James Strong, Group Head of Seafloor Ecosystems, National Oceanography Center, United Kingdom.
The presentation is entitled International Collaboration on Essential Spatial Data.
You have the floor, sir.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I've been very fortunate over the years to work on several habitat restoration projects, typically on marine bivalves in British waters.
However, these days, I specialize more in the mapping and spatial modeling of species and habitats on the seafloor.
I'm quite keen on this work because it answers the fundamental questions of what, where, and how much.
I'm going to reflect on this experience to contribute to today's panel.
Yes.
As we all know, marine habitat ambitions are changing rapidly.
Traditionally, we plan and execute a lot of our activity at the site scale.
This might be an individual reef, seagrass meadow or a bivalve bed.
Of course, these interventions remain the essential nuts and bolts of marine restoration.
However, we're now being asked to be more ambitious about our marine restoration, to be looking at broader areas and to include more species and habitats.
This shift is being driven by some fairly heavyweight policies such as the UN decade on ecosystem restoration, the BBNJ agreement, and of course, the EU nature Restoration regulation.
All these frameworks, all these policies point in a similar direction, which is towards trying to plan and get more regional outcomes for our marine restoration, to coordinate pressure reduction, and to share the burden of monitoring habitat restoration.
Now, for marine scientists like myself, this is a very exciting opportunity because we get to work at broader scales, and we also get to work in a more collaborative manner to make sure that our spatial products, the essential spatial evidence that supports a lot of this restoration work is consistent across areas.
To plan marine habitat restoration at a broader scale, we need to answer three deceptively simple questions, which is what habitats exist and where are they? What's their condition, and how much condition has been lost in comparison to some reference or baseline situation.
I would say for many marine systems, we cannot really answer these questions with sufficient certainty.
We often have, in terms of spatial data, quite localized, high quality marine maps, but they tend to be patchy.
We don't have them at a large spatial scale.
We are also dependent on anthropogenic activity data, and I typically find that that can be quite inconsistent or unavailable between jurisdictions.
When it comes to marine baselines, well, I have to say rarely do we have robust baselines for many habitats.
I dare to say that in fact, sometimes we would even lack the consensus as to what would make a decent baseline for some of these habitats.
I As we've heard several times over the last couple of days, international cooperation really is particularly critical.
It's not nice to have, we need to have it.
Yeah.
Based on this, I think there's five key topics that we need to build collaboration on within the scientific community.
The first is all about how we, we define, observe and map condition.
Now, again, in terms of spatial data, we have lots of presence absence maps, and that gives us lots of useful information on distribution, extent, and fragmentation.
But that's a very narrow description of marine condition, the habitat condition.
What we really need to do is build a new set of maps that capture condition and more variables of conditions, spatial, ecological, and potentially temporal measures of condition into these maps.
I can safely say that's the direction of the marine habitat mapping community.
We are trying to move beyond these presence absence maps and suitability maps and build a growing portfolio of historical habitat maps that are capturing some of these important baselines.
However, there's some major challenges that get in the way.
Firstly, we often lack universal metrics of condition.
When we do have these for specific habitats, they can differ between regions or how they respond when faced with different anthropogenic pressures.
And when it comes to observing condition, actually in the field, that typically requires quite expensive survey techniques, and there's an additional burden in how we process this information back in the lab.
However, there are many opportunities for countering some of these challenges.
I'm well aware that the marine restoration community are beginning to build consensus in terms of universal monitoring metrics that we can use within mapping.
There's also the emerging essential biodiversity variables produced by gooe and Geir Bon, which again provide another foundation for internationally consistent reporting of habitat condition.
In terms of collecting information, we saw a very good example this morning about how autonomous platforms can really help us improve the cost efficiency of data collection, especially in traditionally hard to sample habitats like the deep sea.
Often when you adopt these platforms, you're somewhat obliged to adopt AI assisted processing as well because often the data volumes are huge.
Of course, all these are force multipliers for generating lots of additional good observations of condition.
The next point that I'd like to talk about is how we consistently represent anthropogenic pressures at broader scales.
Now, I find that restoration success often depends less on the site interventions and often more to do with identifying the pressures that have cause degradation and that we act to reduce those pressures.
Now, despite the value of understanding the distribution of pressures, I often find they're inconsistent and differing coverage, resolution, and availability between jurisdictions.
Even when we have a good activity dataset, such as maybe trawling in some jurisdictions, converting that information to pressures and cumulative surfaces of pressure and impact remain quite difficult to do.
Now, I would suggest that there are again, some solutions to this.
Actually, before that, I must say we really got to get on top of this because if different jurisdictions process activity data in different ways, they may come to very different conclusions about the feasibility of restoration, the extent of pressure reduction needed, and the potential recovery times for some of these habitats.
So the opportunity really is to develop shared approaches to how we source and process and represent our human activities.
Thankfully, the regional Seas conventions such as OSPR, HLC, the Barcelona Convention, and the Regional Seas Program provide established governance mechanisms for this type of harmonizing activity data and acting to reduce it in a coordinated international manner.
The next topic I think we're in need of greater collaboration internationally is how we establish spatially explicit baselines.
Now, these aren't just historical curiosities for habitat restoration, they're critical because they very much determine and shape our thinking about how much is being lost and what are meaningful restoration targets.
But again, there's some fairly difficult challenges here.
When it comes to building baselines, often, the information that we need is quite sparse.
It's geographically imbalanced and often might be biased towards areas that persist, which may not necessarily be reflective of the historical distribution.
If we don't correct for this, that can actually lead to the development of some fairly unambitious restoration targets.
Now I can say if we say for habitat mappers like myself and the habitat mapping community more widely, this is very much the direction of travel.
We want to move from presence, absence and suitability maps towards more detailed maps that capture historical situations.
The historical habitat maps that I mentioned earlier.
Okay.
Um, so again, there's some clear opportunities here in that we need to share brand news habitat mapping methodologies and develop new predictor variables, typically incorporating pressures.
I can say if you say for getting and sourcing the essential information, the training data that we need for some of these models, the existing international initiatives like SaBEed 2030, Emont and OBS all provide good mechanisms for coordinated observation, data sharing, and harmonized spatial data products.
Related to the need to develop spally explicit baselines, we also need to make spally explicit models of restoration potential or recovery.
Now, this is a slightly more complicated task in that recovery isn't really the inverse of degradation.
It's a more complicated process.
We need to build in a lot more ecological processes into this.
Currently, there's no universally accepted method for how we might do this.
Also, we have a fairly limited understanding of how habitats recover.
We've got very few documented examples of a fat restoration trajectory.
Often, we know that these recovery trajectories have dependencies, critical thresholds, nonlinear trajectories, or even stable alternative states.
And so it remains quite a complicated process, but I can safely say that for the marine habitat mapping community, that very much is the direction of travel.
We are trying to build more sophisticated models that incorporate more predictor variables that capture some of these missing ecological processes from our models, maps, and outputs.
I'd also like to flag some of the work being done by the ICs working groups.
There are already some really sophisticated models that incorporate aspects of vulnerability, impact and recovery, typically for soft sediment habitats exposed to fishing.
I'd also probably like to flag the Mission ocean and Digital Twin Ocean initiatives in that they continue to develop shared modeling frameworks at basin scales.
The last point for collaboration, I feel is coherence and connectivity.
For a lot of marine habitats, the restoration success often depends on processes that exist outside the restoration site.
This can be aspects of climate change or these source and sink population dynamics.
Yet I find connectivity is often poorly integrated into regional restoration planning.
I think this is worrying because often we can miss easy win projects that look to build metapopulation enhancements.
This doesn't have to be a complicated task.
We have all the information we need to understand connectivity more.
For a lot of the meta population analysis we need, we have great genetic observations that start to shed light on the structure of source and sink populations.
We have access to high quality, high resolution hydrodynamic models that tell us how parcels of water are physically connected.
We have climate change projections, and we have the tools to merge all this information together to easily produce a better understanding of connectivity at the broader scale.
I shall conclude and just say, as we've heard on several occasions, of course, marine habitats, processes, and the pressures they experience occur across borders, and of course, that requires a broader level of cooperation.
I think we need to work in a more collaborative manner when it comes to collecting and sharing information because these observations are the basis of well trained models, and it's also very expensive to collect, so it really does need sharing and reusing.
The finally, I would say whatever we do in terms of spatial products, we need to do in a collaborative manner so that we align and harmonize our spatial products so we don't get discontinuities across borders.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you Mr.
Strong for his presentation.
We will now hear from the sixth and last panelists for this afternoon, Elizabeth Sinclair, Senior Research fellow University of Western Australia.
The presentation is entitled Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Australia, Building Capacity from R&D.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Thank you very much to the co chairs for the opportunity to present to you today.
Before I dive into talking about restoration, I'd really like to remind everybody that restoration should be our last resort.
Not only is it expensive and challenging, marine ecosystems are incredibly biodiverse.
The restoration methods which we have developed for only a very small portion of the species and the scale at which we can recover them is orders of magnitude smaller than the loss that we've seen on this planet to date.
The offsets that are sometimes used to solve some of our problems really don't solve the problem, all they do is shift it because we don't end up with a net gain in the ecosystem.
We also need to remember that our coastal ecosystems in particular are really dynamic.
They shift in space and in time, creating real problems when we have additional pressure from coastal squeeze through our infrastructure and development.
A whole catchment approach is often needed if we're really going to be successful here because most of the problems that occur in our oceans, in our coastal ecosystems start from land.
Looking at source to sea or ridge to reef programs are really going to help once we start to restore our marine ecosystems.
I think my message really first is we need to really focus on protecting what we have left, act on climate change, and then restoration is our last resort and we use that as part of our conservation.
So I think most of us are aware that Sir David Attenbro turned 100 this year and he's obviously a very recognizable voice and he's brought nature to many of our lounge rooms around the world.
But it was really interesting to note in this quote from him how he's acknowledged how his perspective of nature has changed during his century on this planet and if we focus on saving the ocean, saving our seas, we will actually be able to save the planet and its ecosystems.
We need to remember we are part of nature.
We are merely one species on this planet and we have somehow managed to impact every corner of the globe.
But there is an appetite for change at the grassroots in particular, and so that's what we're going to talk about today.
I'm going to take you to Australia, which is where I'm familiar with.
There are many restoration projects underway.
This one is one I'm familiar with and it's looking at a local problem.
We've lost a lot of seagrass in a local bay, which is under a lot of pressure from high industrialization.
About three quarters of the seagrass meadows have been lost with very little natural recovery despite improvements in water quality.
It's under increasing pressure with further developments.
But there's been some actions and they're really working.
We're managing to restore fish habitat and in this case, Posidonia seagrass to make a real difference on the ground.
This research has developed from an idea in the lab, running some small research trials.
As you can see on the top right, it's really scaled up to become a community run project where the national fisheries body has come on board to help facilitate a massive volunteer response from the local community.
The numbers there just recently over the last eight years, there are millions of seagrass seeds which have gone back into our local environment to restore hectas of seagrass.
We're seeing how our restoration projects are having to evolve and scale up as we need to respond to the much more insidious challenges of climate change and causing much more widespread damage.
This is an example from Shark Bay in Western Australia.
Shark Bay is UNSCO world heritage site and it's valued for its seagrass meadows.
These are some of the largest seagrass meadows on the planet.
About a third of them were impacted in the 2011 heatwave.
This was a heat wave which actually impacted the whole of the West Coast and terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
Huge amounts of carbon were emitted and estimates around $3 billion to fisheries and indirect losses of ecosystem services.
We monitored the area about six years following the heat wave and there's very little natural recovery of seagrasses across this area.
You can see that in the map on the right, the brown areas, various either loss or seriously degraded seagrass meadows.
The pictures on the left the top left shows a really healthy wire weeed seagrass meadow in Shark Bay.
The image underneath shows what happens after that seagrass meadow experiences a prolonged heat wave.
It looks like a wildfire has gone through and there's no canopy left.
I'll come back to the actions on this in a few slides.
We heard earlier about the impact of the marine heat wave a couple of years ago in the Caribbean.
It also impacted Australia very heavily.
It wasn't just the tropical systems that were impacted.
We can see up in the top that there was coral bleaching on both sides of the country.
It's Ngalu reef and the Great Barrier Reef.
But we can also see that coastlines were impacted around the whole country to varying degrees, all the way through to our really cool temperate systems in Southern Tasmania.
Climate change is really the single largest threat to our tropical and marine coastal ecosystems in Australia.
If we focus on South Australia, so in the middle on the south of the map, this is an event which is ongoing.
About 12 months ago, an algae bloom exploded in the southern coastal reefs.
It took a while to work out what the cause of this was, but it's an cona algae and it responds to warming oceans and nutrients being in the water.
It's not just one stressor, it's the building of multiple stresses over time.
This algal bloom has killed everything, all biodiversity in the system.
It's toxic for you to walk along the beach and breathe it in when you see the foam on the coastline.
Massive fish die offs, all biodiversity dives you see washed up along the coastline and it's really depressing going for a walk along the beach.
The bottom image, this is a few kilometers offshore.
I can't remember the depth of it, but you can actually see there is no living benthic fauna either.
It's impacted the kelps, the macro algaes, and the seagrass.
The light levels have been reduced to a point where there's not enough light for seagrass to photosynthesize and generate food.
In a single year, this has cost about $250 million to the South Australian economy and that's just looking at fisheries and tourism.
There's obviously a lot more knock on effects from that and it will probably take decades to recover.
This is an ongoing event at the moment.
It's not resolved yet.
A lot of the biodiversity loss has been recorded on databases such as eye naturalists and recording lots of different species.
At the moment, shellfish reef restoration seems to be the best way forward because as we've already heard today, shellfish are really good at filtering the water.
They don't appear to be killed by this algal bloom, so this might be our way to help turn the system around.
I think we all know nature is really good for business.
Australia's blue economy generates billions of dollars each year, and it supports a lot of people in employment.
We have nature based solutions and market based instruments, which are supposed to be incentives to encourage us to do restoration and drive people towards doing restoration.
These systems work better in they're more tried in terrestrial systems and they're not very well developed for our marine and coastal ecosystems at the moment.
We had a budget come out in the last couple of months and less than 1% of Australia's budget has been allocated to nature and that budget is declining over the next few years, as you can see in the graph on the right.
We need about three times that amount of money allocated if we're going to have an impact on our marine systems.
Despite underinvestment, marine ecosystem restoration science is really alive and well in Australia.
We have projects that are working across all marine coastal ecosystems.
There's a list on the right hand side and you can see through the graphs by state, but there's a range in focus on ecosystems.
Some mangroves, there's been a lot of shellfish and seagrass restoration projects, and so on.
Most of these projects are driven by research and researchers trying to find out what's going to work and how we can start to take them to the next step.
Not massive scale, but just slowly scaling up.
These projects are mostly funded by the Australian government.
But researchers, NGOs, citizen scientists, indigenous ranger groups, volunteers, they're the people on the ground actually driving and doing this work.
I'm going to talk about a come back to our seagrass example from Shark Bay.
For those of you not familiar, the large green arrow on the west indicates where we're going.
Shark Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site that experience severe seagrass loss from a marine heat wave.
My research group partnered with the Morgana indigenous ranges in Shark Bay for a two year project to look at using DNA to understand how different seagrass meadows in Shark Bay were related to each other and how much genetic diversity there was in that system.
The second part of that project was focusing on the two species which were most impacted from the heat wave and how we could start to either restore them or assist natural recovery in that system.
We work together from the beginning and building this partnership.
It is challenging when you're 1,000 kilometers apart.
I work in Perth in the Southwest and we're about 10,000 kilometers south of Shark Bay.
Our ranges live anywhere from in Shark Bay to about 1,500 kilometers away.
We're really spread out all of us and we do try to make a point of meeting in Shark Bay.
That's our meeting site.
We work outdoors on the beach.
It's great.
It's a nice relaxed environment for everybody to get to know each other and share knowledge of country of seagrasses, and our marine environment.
The program provided an opportunity for Morgan of people to come back to country, to learn to be rangers, to be paid while they were on their job training.
Together, we created this shared vision for a healthy marine ecosystem in Shark Bay.
It didn't really take long to get to that point.
We all love Shark Bay.
It's a beautiful place and one that we want to keep healthy.
Okay.
In working through this project, we came to realize that the people were also healing as well as country.
A lot of the Morgan people do not grow up on country and so by coming home, they are reconnecting with their country, their people, learning about country and recovering.
It's also healing for scientists that are a bit frustrated with the state of the world as well.
Good for everybody.
I think the big message that we learned from the Morgan people was that we are all connected, whether it's people with each other, whether it's people with animals or whether it's plants, the aquatic environment, animals.
All of these ecosystems are all connected and we all impact each other in a way.
If you heal one, you're going to heal another, the knock on effect.
I'll move on from there.
Okay.
After the end of two years, we ended up with some great genetic data which told us about how our seagrass meadows were related to each other, including finding the largest seagrass clone, largest plant on the planet.
That was pretty interesting finding and not one we were expecting.
Sharing the knowledge, the process of doing this research of reconnecting with country and figuring out how to restore these two seagrass species needed to be shared.
That's the most important outcomes from our research.
As an academic, we typically share knowledge through more professional peer reviewed papers.
We also share it through more popular articles with the general public, which is really important, breaking down some of the complex scientific data into a clear message that everyone can understand.
Working in an indigenous group, it's important to share in a way that more people can connect with.
Sometimes that comes down to public speaking.
We had a seagrass festival where we shared knowledge of seagrasses, how to restore them.
Some of the credits that you can get back once you restore the seagrass.
We had a lot of artists, a lot of indigenous people are really good artists.
Having opportunities to sit and do collective artworks, created a relaxed environment for sharing knowledge about seagrass, how to restore it, and the animals in there.
It's a beautiful mosaic on the bottom right, which was created by about 20 people.
A lot of different ways we can share knowledge depending on who you're trying to communicate with.
We must have done a great job or an okay job anyway because our local indigenous business, Tidal Moon joined on board for the first iteration of expanding seagrass restoration.
We scaled up from 25 meter plots of testing methods to trying to do 1 hectare, which doesn't sound like much if you live on land, but when you try to restore a hectare of seagrass underwater, there are a lot of challenges.
The first one, we have a lot of left corner there are sandbags.
One of our seagrass species actually distributes or disperses seedlings in the water column.
After you've lost all of your seagrass on the seafloor, there's nothing for these new seedlings to attach to and start growing.
We're facilitating the recovery of seagrass meadow by putting down a substrate that they can attach to.
That's quite easy.
We can throw these sandbags off the edge of the boat.
We don't need divers.
It's cheap.
We're using biodegradable materials.
And once they're in there, then the seagrass can start to recover itself to some degree.
Other methods we use are planting a lot more involved.
We set this up in 2023.
But after successfully communicating with the local public in Shark Bay, a local business operator jumped on board, tourism operator, they run nature cruises.
They were really concerned that the loss of the seagrass had led to the loss of the dugms.
They'd moved out.
There were fewer sea turtles, a lot of them weren't looking very healthy and the dolphins weren't looking very healthy and weren't breeding because there weren't enough fish.
So this business really wanted to jump on board with us and figure out how they could recover the seagrass so that they could actually continue their business.
They're really full on into their third year now of doing this.
The image on the left is a seagrass.
A couple of seedlings, about a year old.
They've grown in a lot compared to the little seedings you see on the top of the bags on the right hand side image.
What this method also does is it actually stabilizes the seafloor enough that there's natural recruitment of some of the smaller tropical seagrass into this ecosystem.
There's a knock on effect of a fairly simple activity.
There are up to about 4 hectares restoration, so it's starting to expand and the national wreck Fisheries Body has also come on board to manage this program as well.
Scaling up I'll just finish here.
I think going forward, it's really important to maintain existing partnerships as well as build new ones.
Having that good communication, particularly in local communities can lead to bigger things, especially when you're working in really remote locations.
Australia has a national network that actually extends to New Zealand now.
It's the Australsian Coastal Restoration Network, and it's brought together over 700 members.
It started out as just seagrass, but we've merged with mangroves, shellfish, reefs, kelps, and so on.
We have a lot of interested people.
Um, I think we heard earlier on today there was talk about the mosaic of habitats underwater, so we can start to look at doing restoration not just as a single species or a single group of organisms, but collaborating across shellfish reefs with seagrass restoration and so on.
Australia also works in the blue carbon space and the nature of hair market.
These are supposed to be incentives to encourage restoration activities.
Again, they're not so well developed in marine systems at the moment.
But I think we need to really focus on working across these marine ecosystems, but also for our national network to be communicating well with national networks in other countries, such as the US, the UK and I think there's one in Europe too.
We're starting to do that because we all have similar problems, similar barriers to actually doing restoration at scale and they're the key ones for us, which I think have commonly come up through the last couple of days.
Having that increased no gap funding.
I've just talked to you about two year projects.
We've got nowhere to go beyond two years unless we really start to get that continuous funding.
Um, challenges of working in marine environment and also having fit for purpose governance.
There's no land tenure rules.
There's no guarantees that if we put the seagrass restoration in now in five years time, someone goes, Well, I want to put a port here or I want to put in a boat marine or something and then that seagrass is lost and all that effort goes out the door as well.
And permitting is also an issue.
It took 12 months to get permitting to start to do seagrass restoration in a world Heritage site.
That time can have a major knock on effect in terms of having energized people ready to go and then putting them off and putting them off.
I guess also political will and incentives.
So it's very slow to gain traction to really scale up our restoration in Australia, so Thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
Now we've finished listening to our panelists, so the floor is now open for questions and comments.
Maybe to start us off, I have a panelist here, miss Rayner, who wanted to pose a question as well.
Thank you, co chair.
My question is for our last panelists.
Can you remind us of what species of seagas you worked with and give More information about what your next steps are in terms of sea gas restoration and what was the survival rate of the substrate that was implanted? Did you have issues with it washing away? What's the survival rate for the sea gas itself, and how long does it take for the bags to become a cohesive bed? Thank you.
I have a question from panelist Mr.
Day.
Thank you.
Excellent presentations.
I just had a couple of comments really and maybe a question, I suppose, very inspiring presentation, Elizabeth, about the work you're doing with communities.
I think this is something that often people misunderstand the power and the potential of getting communities involved because it has a ripple effect, it has multiple benefits beyond just the ecosystem, and you can unleash an amazing amount of unexpected energy and goodwill and political will as a result of that.
One comment also what James was saying about what are the targets with restoration and there was a discussion yesterday about what's the baseline? What are you trying to achieve? I think one thing that we should all keep in mind as well is that a key part of restoration is to restore the adaptive capacity of the ecosystem.
This is the key, in my opinion, way of making sure that nature has a way of adapting to the changing world we're living in.
That largely depends on the genetics of the dominant species, the habitat forming keystone species in an environment.
This is really a question for Chanel, if I may go back to the previous speakers.
Jamaica has some great success stories with your fish sanctuaries.
I had the pleasure of working for four years in Jamaica on some of these really exciting community led no take marine areas where the fish biomass just bounced back over 100%.
Really exciting to see that.
But I'm also saddened to hear just how bad the loss of coral has been similarly to where I work in the Eastern Caribbean.
I know Neppo is very concerned about diseases and the spread of diseases, but I would urge you to look at the need for moving corals both within Jamaica so that you have gene banks of your corals at multiple locations so you don't lose the remaining genotypes, but also look at agreements with other countries to share corals.
These resilient surviving corals are absolutely key for the future of these species, especially the branching corals, which are so valuable.
The question would be, what is your thinking, Chanel, about the likelihood that the government of Jamaica may embrace a more progressive view maybe on how to share corals move them within Jamaica to encourage greater genetic diversity in the nurseries, but also the sharing of these resilient, heat tolerant corals.
Thank you.
Thank you for your questions.
Let me now move to the panelists.
Maybe if you can start miss Sinclair, and then we move to Mr.
Strong and miss Rener.
Thank you.
To panelists.
We were looking at two species in Shark Bay, Posidonia stras, which is the ribbon weed, and another one called wire weeed Amphibilus Antarctica.
Both of these species are temperate, cool water species and Shark Bay is the northern range edge for them.
And The amphibs anacha is quite a genetically diverse set of meadows and there's good gene flow between those meadows.
I think I mentioned earlier, the Posidonia australs that's a single clone for about 95% of the range up there and we're dealing with a single genotype we're using to restore.
For those not familiar with Shark Bay, it's a large embayment of two bays and there's an incredibly large salinity gradient that occurs across that bay.
A number of the experiments that I've been involved in have been translocating cuttings from that giant clone to see how they cope with changes across that salinity gradient.
That helps us determine where we source material for restoration.
Posidonia Australis, if we can only restore that using cuttings.
We take cuttings of rhizome and replant them and we space them about a meter apart.
It will take 8-10 years to fill in a dense healthy meadow if they will take Um, it's quite a slow growing.
It's a really large seagrass.
The wire weed is much more weedy and it has dispersal of a lot of sexually reproduced propagules, and it probably takes more like five to eight years to fill in a dense meadow.
The substrate that we put down, we've tried a number of different grades of hessian and different shapes of bags.
We've got long cylindrical bags, and then we have big square bags which are much more difficult to handle and much heavier.
The bags can last anywhere between about six and 18 months and 18 months is great because that gives the new ceiling time to actually get its roots in an anchor and establish.
Ideally, we really need to monitor for a lot longer.
We really only got data for two to three years of monitoring post planting and the bags are being monitored, Sorry, the scaling up of the weed restoration with the tourism operator and our national fisheries body.
They've really only started scaling up in the last year or two and they've got first year of monitoring data.
It's going to be a while before we know how successful it's been.
But the first year results, which came in a couple of weeks ago are looking good, they're really going all out this year to do a lot more restoration.
I think that answers your questions.
I think perhaps just responding to the second panelist.
I was just going to make a comment.
I know we're dealing with a single genotype for the Posidonia, but we do have data on thermal optima for that individual and comparing it with populations further south, all the way down the West Coast south of Perth.
In all of those populations at the moment, it shows that Posidonia australis is actually growing below its thermal optimum.
And which suggests that there is a little bit of time that we have up our sleeves in terms of rain shifting southward to avoid heat waves and so on.
Okay.
I have little to add other than, of course, I agree that when it comes to baselines that they need to be adaptive.
I would suggest that for some of the single species biogenic habitats, that's reasonably straightforward.
But when I look at the full list of habitats that are within scope under the EU's nature Restoration regulation, a lot of those are quite complex multi species habitats, and it's not necessarily clear as to what are the movers and shakers and the big biogenic species within some of those habitats.
Uh, but I think there is, as I said, a growing interest in historical habitat mapping to understand what some of these baselines may have looked like.
It's a matter of generating predictive models with pressures built in and then then removed to get back to some of the historical footprints.
I think, uh, an acknowledgment of some of the ecological processes that support these habitats is built into things like the EU nature restoration regulation through the favorable reference areas, trying to understand what are the absolute minimum sizes of habitat needed to sustain the population dynamics of some of these areas.
I think that's a very, uh, good step forward because then you're combining habitat mapping, but also this demographic modeling understanding what are critical sizes for ultimately sustaining these habitats and what is tangible and useful restoration? Because as we heard quite rightly, it's the last resort because it's so expensive.
Thank you.
As it relates to moving corals across parish branches in Jamaica and establishments of gene banks, it is a commitment of the government of Jamaica to explore these options because we do recognize that most of our hard coral species are now critically endangered because of the passing of the bleaching events and also the di edema die off event and stony coral tissue lot disease.
In terms of biosecurity and quarantine, whereas the government can implement a policy or guidelines of how to safely do it to our satisfaction.
It's an issue with capacity of our marine protected area managers to implement such protocols.
So where we're at now is we're having dialogue with our MPA managers to find out what's feasible, what's required, and if there are any compromises that can be made.
Right now, only one facility in Jamaica has an exit two nursery that will be able to set up a quarantine scenario.
We have two marine labs.
Ideally, any gene bank across the island, we want it to be within a well established institution that has a strong management framework and strong funding backing behind it.
A lot of our MPM managers operate on grants and this can be an issue where a lot of projects start and then they stop and then there's a bit of uncertainty.
When you're dealing with a critical endangered species such as coral, there are certain things we'd like to have in place and all that.
You have the resources in your position and tomorrow the doors have closed.
It's very important for us to have a lot of institutional management concerns settled so that we can explore these options.
Underground right now, there's limited framework to facilitate gym banks across the island because of infrastructure.
This is always an avenue for collaboration across the region and within Jamaica.
Other MPA managers work very well together.
Through our coral mapping program, we have a good idea of where our surviving corals are because if you are to establish gene banks, we don't want to go down the same road where you're using clones of colonies and using that to populate your gene bank.
We're focusing on assistive fertilization to get that genetic diversity amongst our reefs and going forward, it is the government's intention to um, give real attention to the potential of moving corals across the island.
I can't say yet how we would address, moving them across international boundaries because we heard earlier today how difficult that was for other Caribbean territories.
But we do see cross perish as a feasible.
Solution to our limited supply, and it's something that we currently do.
In Montagobay, which is our Western parish in Jamaica, there is movement between Hanover, which is another more western.
We have it at limited scales, but it's not a broad brush approach that we allow any institution to do.
It's on specific permissions.
Thank you so much.
We have now reached the end of our speaker's list for this afternoon.
We will continue and conclude our discussions under this second panel segment tomorrow afternoon.
Can I ask if the Secretariat has any comments to add? Thank you, distinguished co chair.
Very briefly, two things.
First of all, do keep in mind that we do not have a meeting tomorrow morning.
We will resume our meeting at 3:00 P.M.
Tomorrow afternoon.
On the second point following requests from delegations, the co chairs are considering briefly reopening the Item three of the agenda on general statements on Friday morning.
So if there are any other delegations wishing who have not had the opportunity to make a general statement on Monday but still wish to do so.
Please contact the Secretariat so we can plan accordingly.
Thank you very much.
Any thanks to the Secretariat.
My co here and I wish to thank once again our panelists and, of course, all delegations for the pertinent questions and comments and let us thank in the usual manner, our distinguished panelists this afternoon.
Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.