Cristiana Simão Seixas is a senior researcher at the Environmental Studies and Research Centre (NEPAM), University at Campinas (UNICAMP), in Brazil.
Her research interests include environmental governance, integrated community-based conservation and local development, indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge, ecosystem services/nature’s contributions to people, social-ecological resilience, transformative change, and transdisciplinary approaches. She has contributed to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in several assessments, including co-chairing the IPBES Regional Assessment for the Americas (2015-2018).
Simão Seixas opened Session 3 Sustainable Ocean Development at MSEAS 2024 with her talk on the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Ocean-based prosperity.
The role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Ocean-based prosperity
What is the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Ocean-based prosperity? Prosperity is often associated with wealth, particularly in the western world. However, prosperity is about opportunity and freedom to thrive. It derives from the Latin word “prosper" which means "doing well". In this broad sense, a relatively isolated small coastal community with access to high quality ocean food, where fishers have the freedom and opportunity to sustain their livelihoods, instead of spending their time fighting for their rights (or their lives!), can be very prosperous with healthy and happy people, but not necessarily wealthy. On the other hand, a densely populated coastal urban neighborhood may have much more material means, while most of its inhabitants have become disconnected from the sea around them - often polluted - and eat seafood that they have no clue where it comes from or the social and environmental impact of its production.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services are the support system of people's good quality of life and economies. The Ocean and the coastal zone provide humans with enormous biodiversity and ecosystem services. These include material ecosystem services such as fishing products and bioproducts; regulating ecosystem services such as climate regulation and coastal protection; and immaterial ecosystem services such as leisure, spirituality, inspiration, and culture. The Ocean contributes to human well-being and economies not only on the coastal zone, but also inland - thousands of kilometers away from it. As an example, the rain regimes that feed the agricultural sector in most countries depend on water evaporated from the Ocean.
Unfortunately, most people are not aware of the importance of the Ocean for their well-being, nor are policy- and decision-makers aware of the importance of conserving the Ocean to sustain economies in the long run. On the opposite: the Ocean – and particularly the open sea - became the new frontier for natural resource exploitation following the same logic of capital-driven economic systems – including consumerism - that led to what the United Nations Environment Programme is calling the triple environmental crises: the loss of biodiversity, climate change and pollution.
Ocean-related industries include fisheries, tourism, shipping, oil and gas, mining, and wind and wave power industries. For them to operate in a sustainable way, government policymakers, private-sector decision-makers and society as a whole need to understand the importance of conserving and restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services. Not surprisingly, the UN declared the 2021-2030 decade both as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development as well as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Moreover, all sectors need to understand that the "business as usual" mode, not only causes environmental impact but also social injustice, including loss of rights and displacement of indigenous and traditional communities; ocean grabbing; impacts on fishing livelihood; inequitable distribution of economic benefits; among other social and cultural impacts. On the other hand, the contribution of indigenous and traditional peoples' knowledge and practices to use resources sustainably have been more and more documented, bringing some lessons to the non-indigenous world, such as the need to observe nature carefully and respect its rhythms, instead of trying to control them.
To sustainably use and conserve the Ocean and its benefits for future generations to prosper, a major paradigm shift is needed among the public and private sectors, but also among most societies. We need to overcome the myths of growth and consumerism in which most western societies have operated for the past century and half. Neither of them has reduced poverty or brought happiness to people in general. On the opposite: we observe inequity and poverty rising more than ever in most nations; and we face a pandemic of mental health issues, led by depression and anxiousness.
The argument I will bring in my talk at MSEAS is that such a paradigm shift for an Ocean-based prosperity requires reconnecting humans to nature - even in large cities – in addition to good governance guided by coordinated and integrated management policies and actions, at multiple levels and among different sectors of society, as well as by socio-environmental justice.
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MSEAS 2024 runs from 3–7 June in Yokohama, Japan. For more information, visit the MSEAS Symposium page or follow MSEAS.
