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Marine litter represents a critical environmental challenge that reflects systemic unsustainability. It calls for a reexamination of social structures, resource management, materials life cycles, consumption patterns, waste production, and strategies to manage debris (Scrich et al., 2024). With far-reaching socioeconomic and ecological impacts that threaten human health, coastal livelihoods, and marine biodiversity (GESAMP, 2015, 2020), nations must prioritize marine litter mitigation (Lau et al., 2020)—an imperative reinforced by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030). In response, courses such as those among the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML) have become vital tools for effective capacity building and knowledge sharing. They empower stakeholders to implement sustainable solutions and provide a path for overcoming global challenges and achieving long-term sustainability (IOC-UNESCO, 2020).
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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2026
Developing Capacity for Transdisciplinary Studies of Changing Ocean Systems
Addressing global challenges such as climate change requires large-scale collective actions, but such actions are hindered by the complexity and scale of the problem and the uncertainty in the long-term benefit of short-term actions (Jagers et al., 2019). In addition to climate change, socio-ecological systems face the cumulative pressures associated with resource needs, technology development, industrial expansion, and area conflicts. In marine systems, this has been called “the blue acceleration” (Jouffray et al., 2020) and is referred to as “socio-ecological pressures” in this paper. These socio-ecological pressures reduce our ability to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals and meet the challenges of the UN Ocean Decade, and require integrating knowledge within a shared conceptual framework. For example, achieving sustainable growth must integrate ecological, socioeconomic, and governance perspectives on a larger scale by considering ecological impacts, ecosystem carrying capacities, economic trade-offs, social acceptability, and policy realities. This requires capacity development whereby actors unite to bridge disciplinary boundaries to meet challenges of complex systems.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2318309
- PAR ID:
- 10599687
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Oceanography Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Oceanography
- ISSN:
- 1042-8275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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