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Children's right to a healthy ocean at the OIN workshop.
PhD Researcher Emily Murray joins the Ocean Incubator Network in Copenhagen for an interdisciplinary workshop on intergenerational ocean literacy.
At the beginning of May, PhD researcher Emily joined an interdisciplinary group of academic researchers, masters and doctoral students, practitioners, and young people in Copenhagen for an Ocean Incubator Network (OIN) workshop. Coordinated by research professor Margherita Paola Poto, who also sits on the Youth Climate Justice Advisory Board, the OIN brings together experts, local communities and education institutions to develop integrated education and research programmes with the primary objective to improve ocean literacy, with a focus on advancing SDG 4 Quality Education and Lifelong Learning, SDG 5 Gender Equality, and SDG 14 Life Below Water across Arctic communities and beyond. Funded by the UArctic from 2023 to 2025, the main activity of the network was an interactive workshop to develop a pilot ocean education program and a curriculum on ocean literacy that is applicable for different ages and abilities.
The workshop opened up with a polar dip to connect with the chilly sea and get into a ‘blue’ mindset for the intense day of co-creating ahead. After an introduction to the importance of ocean literacy and the main themes of the workshop (positionality, co-creation and interdisciplinarity), the participants spent the remainer of the day working together in their assigned groups with the task of developing an activity to contribute to an ocean literacy toolkit that will be published as an open access resource at the beginning of 2025. The workshop involved critical peer feedback sessions to give all participants the opportunity to brings their expertise and views into the development of all the activities.
As defined by UNESCO, ocean literacy is “an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you, and your influence on the ocean” while also encouraging citizens and stakeholders to become more aware of the ocean, and the environment in general, to foster a greater sense of responsibility and care. Emily facilitated the group tasked with creating an activity on positionality—a concept or practice in research that helps to situate researchers in relation to their participants and/or research context to create an awareness of power dynamics and privilege. Outside research, the idea of positionality can be thought of as a self-awareness practice to understand how we, as humans, have an impact on the ocean (even if we don’t live near an ocean) and how the ocean impacts us— whether that is through the food we eat or the intensification of climate events associated with rising sea levels and temperatures. The group came up with a mini toolkit that involves different senses (touch, sound) and movement to engage learners in connecting with themselves, others and the ocean. The group had fruitful conversations around accessibility to education and specific mentions of Article 29 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child which states that one of the aims of education is to develop respect for the natural environment—which is something that can and should be done from a young age.
The intersection of children’s rights and the ocean remains very unexplored. As part of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to a healthy ocean is imperative to ensure children’s rights to (especially) health, development, and culture; for all children, and especially those living in coastal communities. As elaborated by Hilmi et al. (2021) and Atwood et al. (2020), the ocean is important for the air humans breathe, regulating the climate and global water cycle, and food production systems (Strand et al., 2023). In the most recent General Comment by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the relationship between children’s rights and the ocean is only minimally explored through the impacts of marine pollution and the cultural rights on Indigenous peoples. In the context of children’s rights, ocean literacy must (1) consider contextually-relevant environmental education that integrates different types of ocean literacies and knowledges, and (2) empower young people to participate in decision-making processes regarding ocean governance (One Ocean Hub, 2024).
In further developing the ocean literacy toolkit as part of the OIN initiatives, a children’s rights-based perspective will be taken to connect with the research objectives of the Youth Climate Justice project. Since children and young people are the most impacted by the climate crisis, placing children’s rights at the centre of ocean literacy education and research programmes helps to ensure that current and future generations develop a strong understanding and sense of care towards the oceans, and included in the movement towards a healthier planet.
References
Atwood, T. B., Witt, A., Mayorga, J., Hammill, E. and Sala, E., “Global patterns in marine sediment carbon stocks”, Frontiers in Marine Science 7 (2020) 165: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00165 Web.
Hilmi, N., Chami, R., Sutherland, M. D., Hall-Spencer, J. M., Lebleu, L., Benitez, M. B. and Levin, L. A., “The role of blue carbon in climate change mitigation and carbon stock conservation”, Frontiers in Climate 3 (2021): https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.710546 Web.
One Ocean Hub. “Children’s Right to a Healthy Ocean.” One Ocean Hub, https://oneoceanhub.org/childrens-right-to-a-healthy-ocean/#:~:text=work%20with%20educators%20to%20ensure,making%20processes%20and%20conservation%20initiatives. Accessed 13 May 2024.
Strand, Mia, Sophie Shields, Elisa Morgera, Dylan McGarry, Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster, Lindy Brown, and Bernadette Snow. "Protecting Children’s Rights to Development and Culture by Re-Imagining “Ocean Literacies”". The International Journal of Children's Rights 31.4 (2023): 941-975. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-3104000 Web.