Ocean Citizens – increasing awareness and supporting empowerment
We all depend on our oceans. We rely on them for our basic needs but our oceans are poorly governed, over-exploited and largely unmapped. Wherever we live in the world we are deeply and powerfully connected to the sea. Yet, relatively low levels of public understanding and awareness mean the oceans are largely ‘out of sight and out of mind’.
The Lloyd’s Register Foundation Foresight Review of Ocean Safety tackles a key challenge – how can ocean-based industries provide essential services while ensuring that this is done by safe and sustainable means? Proposed solutions include working with the UN Global Compact and other partners to support the adoption of safety and sustainability principles into future ocean engineering. The Review also highlights the opportunity for the Foundation to lead communication efforts to increase public awareness of these challenges and to develop ocean citizens – people who understand and act on rights and responsibilities towards a safe and sustainable ocean.
The Learning from the Past programme will use the Foundation’s unique maritime heritage collections to increase public engagement and we will work with others to ensure future generations of ocean citizens can learn from the heritage being created today.
We will work with organisations such as the International Congress of Maritime Museums to help communicate with new stakeholders, a diverse spectrum of the museum visiting public and a digital audience beyond. We will show how our maritime heritage shapes the way we think about ocean stewardship. With new resources we can build momentum for change, deepen understanding and amplify advocacy. We will also support programmes that mobilise citizen scientists such as CITiZAN and SCAPE.
We believe that Learning from the Past can contribute distinctive and engaging perspectives to broader ocean education efforts. We want our activities to contribute to existing campaigns such as the Ocean Literacy programme supported by UNESCO. They define Ocean Literacy as an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean. An ocean-literate person is able to make informed and responsible decisions regarding the ocean and its resources.
In developing this part of the LFP programme we will always be mindful that indigenous, and traditional knowledge can significantly inform the principles that underpin the concepts of Ocean Literacy and ocean citizens – especially as such knowledge often resides in vulnerable coastal communities. This knowledge will be recognised as particularly important in understanding how change has been experienced in the past and how that can inform new ways to manage. We will look to existing programmes such as The Commonwealth Blue Charter to help us ensure that recognition of traditional knowledge is central to our work.
A just transition to a low carbon, sustainable ocean economy necessitates investment, education, infrastructure, innovation, and decent, safe jobs. Learning from the Past aims to be an impactful contributor to increasing public awareness and supporting good choices by policy makers, investors and by wider consumers. We will help to develop ocean citizens who are aware, empowered and motivated to help make the change that we need to create the safe and sustainable ocean that we want.