IOI Canada was honoured to be invited to provide ocean governance training for the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence, which is currently hosted by the Ocean Frontier Institute. The Nippon Foundation - Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) programme aims to strengthen the international ocean science community’s capacity for observing and monitoring the world ocean “to promote societal benefits, to assist with the obligations of the oceanographic community to promote sustainable development in the world ocean, and to improve networking among the oceanographic institutes as well as in the broader marine community.” Collaboration as a partner was therefore an excellent fit for IOI Canada!
Under this programme, promising early-career scientists from emerging and developing countries were already spending 10 months studying in Canada, with their time split between the Fisheries and Marine Institute in Newfoundland, Hakai Institute in British Columbia and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. As indicated in the Participant Profiles, this year’s scholars represented 10 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas and were drawn from a range of backgrounds in marine science and technology, with all having at least one degree, and most two or three.
The customised, interdisciplinary IOI course ran between 9th June and 10th July, with a schedule consisting of more than 50 hours of classroom time and field trips to a diverse range of sites, selected to complement and enrich the academic sessions. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, readings and guided tours, the participants explored a selection of key topics relating to:
- Law of the Sea and Ocean Governance,
- Environmental Challenges and Food Security,
- Indigenous Perspectives,
- Human Security and the Ocean.
In doing so, they benefited from the knowledge and expertise of around 45 speakers from multiple backgrounds and disciplines. These included academics, researchers and practitioners with extensive experience in Canada and internationally, and together they successfully challenged the NF-POGO Scholars to step outside their area of specialisation and engage with important ocean governance issues.