All files classified under: Coasts and Oceans

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production system in the world, and the trend is projected to continue. Although the industry provides an important opportunity to supplement the oceans’ food supply, it can also cause significant social and environmental impacts if managed improperly.

In 2008, WWF asked CBI to help coordinate a global consensus-based standard setting process that will result in scientific and credible social and environmental performance measures at the farm-site level. Subsequently, CBI has worked with WWF’s coordinators to improve the quality of decision-making among stakeholders worldwide—including scientists, producers, civil society groups, and NGOs. By providing planning and facilitation services for numerous stakeholder meetings around the globe, CBI has supported six global aquaculture dialogues related to shrimp, salmon, pangasius, tilapia, shellfish, and trout.

How should the coastline be managed in coming years? CBI worked with NOAA and the Coastal States Organization to gather input from people across the nation on how the coasts could be better managed and to develop principles to guide that management.

CBI assists the Hudson River Sustainable Shorelines Project to facilitate a complex research and stakeholder engagement process with the aim of promoting sustainable shoreline management in the face of sea level rise and more. This collaborative project will gather, synthesize, and distribute ecological, engineering, economic, management, and regulatory data on how best to manage the Hudson River shoreline.

 

In the United States, coastal communities face many immediate challenges, including declining fish stocks, rapid population growth and aging infrastructure. Yet over the next 50 years, some communities must face the potential threat of their own extinction due to climate change.

CBI has experimented with using gaming to help coastal communities address the risks of climate change and broker local agreements. This article details the events of April 27, 2009, when, in Annapolis, more than 170 mayors, county commissions, environmentalists, business leaders and Maryland state officials came together for an interactive summit about community-level responses to climate risks such as sea-level rise and storm surge that threaten the state’s coast. The summit’s centerpiece was an innovative negotiation role-play that demonstrated the key challenges and policy options coastal communities face. To view television coverage of the event, visit: http://wjz.com/local/sea.level.2.995688.html.