The agreement was signed in Copenhagen on 14 May by Dr Graham Allen, Acting Director of Seabed 2030, and Paul Holthus, Founding President and CEO of the WOC, on the fringes of the 1st Global Planning Meeting of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
To mark the signing of the MOU it was announced that Seabed 2030 will be taking part in the World Ocean Council’s 7th annual Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS), Paris, 20-22 November 2019, and will collaborate with the WOC to conduct a workshop for industry on bathymetric data collection and sharing.
“Collaboration across continents and different sectors of the maritime community is absolutely essential to our goal of producing a definitive, publicly available map of the world’s ocean floor”, said Dr Graham Allen. “This partnership with the World Ocean Council will help us engage the ocean business community in pursuit of this goal. The role that they can play contributing or collecting data will help advance our understanding of the ocean, and of how we can act sustainably and responsibly in the future.”
Speaking after the signing, Paul Holthus said: “The World Ocean Council is the unique international cross-sectoral business leadership alliance for ocean sustainable development, science and stewardship. The MOU with Seabed 2030 strengthens our efforts to encourage ocean industries to contribute bathymetric data, which we are advancing as part of the broader WOC Smart Ocean – Smart Industries program, which engages the full range of ocean business sectors to participate in data collection and sharing.”
The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, launched by Mr Yohei Sasakawa of The Nippon Foundation at the UN Ocean Conference in 2017, is a collaborative project to map the entirety of the world’s ocean floor by the year 2030, and to include all bathymetric data in the freely available GEBCO Ocean Map.
In pursuit of this goal, Seabed 2030 is building a global community of ocean mappers, hydrographers, scientists, industry, and the public to discover and publish all existing bathymetric data. Seabed 2030 also aims to inform and inspire new mapping expeditions to ‘map the gaps’ in our knowledge of the seafloor, and provide the world with the definitive map of ocean bathymetry.
For more detailed information on The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, please visit our website, seabed2030.gebco.net, Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @Seabed2030, or contact Dr Graham Allen on [email protected].
About The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project
The Nippon Foundation, a private, non-profit foundation, was established in 1962 for the purpose of carrying out philanthropic activities, using revenue from motorboat racing. The Foundation’s overall objectives include social innovation, assistance for humanitarian activities and global ocean management. Its philanthropic ideals embrace social development and self-sufficiency, and it pursues these principles by working to improve public health and education, alleviate poverty, eliminate hunger and help disabled people.
The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) partners The Nippon Foundation in the Seabed 2030 Project. GEBCO is a joint project of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO – the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. It is the only intergovernmental organisation with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor. It has its origins in the GEBCO chart series initiated in 1903 by Prince Albert I of Monaco, and aims to provide the most authoritative, publicly-available bathymetric datasets for the world’s oceans.
The Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project is a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and GEBCO to inspire the complete mapping of the world’s ocean by 2030 and to compile all bathymetric data into the freely-available GEBCO Ocean Map.
Working under the auspices of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), GEBCO has a 100-year history of ocean floor mapping. Seabed 2030, launched at the United Nations Ocean Conference in 2017, is building a global community of ocean mappers, hydrographers, scientists, industry and the public to discover and publish all existing bathymetric data. Seabed 2030 advocates for new mapping expeditions to ‘map the gaps’ in our knowledge of the seafloor and provide the world with the definitive map of world bathymetry.
About the World Ocean Council
The WOC – the Global Blue Economy Business Organization – is the international, cross-sectoral alliance for private sector leadership, collaboration and action on ocean sustainability, stewardship and science. Companies from a range of industries worldwide are distinguishing themselves as leaders in “Corporate Ocean Responsibility”, including shipping, oil and gas, tourism, fisheries, aquaculture, mining, renewable energy, ocean technology and investment.
WOC Members are part of an overall WOC Network of 35,000+ ocean industry stakeholders around the world. The WOC is a registered not-for-profit organization in the US, and France.
For more information, visit https://www.oceancouncil.org/.
