Ocean Nexus Webinar | Riding the Waves: Power, Inequality, and Pathways to Justice in Ocean Governance

About

The United Nation’s World Ocean Assessment defines ocean governance as “a complex and dynamic interplay of multilevel intergovernmental institutions, instruments and regimes in which concepts, principles and means of implementation are developed and adopted.” While emphasizing it multi-scale nature, including global and regional institutions, ocean governance aims to strengthen legal connectivity, enhancing coherence and synergies in governance. Such a focus on institutions and regimes, designed with the apparent intention to achieve win-win outcomes, neglects that, ocean governance is inherently political and replete with power asymmetries. Power is often mentioned, though rarely analyzed in ways that speak to the design of policies, institutions, and mechanisms of governance. This webinar introduces the power in institutions matrix designed to build bridges between social science scholarship on power and their application in the context of policymaking and governance.

This webinar is brought to you by Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus at the University of Rhode Island and Brandeis University.