Ocean 100 Dialogues
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the Ocean 100 Dialogues and what does ocean stewardship mean?
- The scope of the Ocean 100 Dialogues is ocean-wide, working across different ocean-linked industries, to generate global impact. There are real opportunities and value to collectively exercising ocean stewardship across industries. This is an exercise in science-based voluntary action and initiative from the world’s largest ocean-based companies, not a new institution or permanent organization.
- Stewardship is a process of collaboratively articulating responsibility and ethics that incorporates social and environmental dimensions, based on science. It explicitly acknowledges that people, nations and the global economy are intertwined with the biosphere and are global forces shaping it.
Q: What topics will the Ocean 100 Dialogues focus on?
- This depends on what the Ocean 100 leaders and science facilitators deem most necessary. The Ocean 100 Dialogues can identify which topics are already saturated and topics that companies are struggling to make progress on.
- It will also identify areas where companies can provide high impact and have the ability to add to existing efforts, particularly in the areas of climate change, biodiversity loss and equity.
Q: How will the Ocean 100 science facilitators contribute?
- Provide state-of-the-art science in the areas of ocean climate, biodiversity and equity, including forward-looking (mega-trends, scenario planning, etc.).
- Facilitate and monitor transformative change by connecting evidence-based knowledge to action through dialogue and collaboration.
- Stimulate companies to take on a larger responsibility for the ocean and develop global leadership in sustainability by focusing not only on problems, but also on opportunities.
- Independently investigate and define the problems using rigorous methods, while also engaging in the co-production of knowledge with companies to ensure that co-designed solutions address the problems, operate in line with the SDGs, and make business sense.
Q: Will all Ocean 100 companies be part of this project?
- Membership is expected to grow organically through the active peer-to-peer onboarding of Ocean 100 companies. We envisage all Ocean 100 companies to be eligible to participate.
Q: When and how can companies sign up, and what are the commitments?
- An expression of interest can be made via confirmation email to one or more of the partners (Duke University, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Friends of Ocean Action, or associated initiative partners), on a rolling basis; the earlier a company begins to participate, the more it can shape the Dialogues.
- Upon joining, companies commit to engage in a science-based dialogue about the roles that they could collectively play in ocean stewardship. This would include:
- Co-creation of – and a willingness to uphold – an overall ambition of ocean stewardship that will be publicly announced at a global summit (e.g. COP26, UN Ocean Conference)
- Participation in 1-2 CEO-level Dialogues through the end of 2022
- Quarterly strategic working sessions at the chief sustainability officer/strategy officer(s) level through the end of 2022
- Active recruitment of peers to join the Ocean 100 Dialogues
Q: How long will the Ocean 100 Dialogues run for?
- The Dialogues aim for time-bound action and impact during the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
- The initiative aims to see the development of an initial round of commitments companies in their first year, followed by monitoring and implementation support over the following three years to 2025, and then taking stock and focusing on goals until 2030. This effort could extend beyond 2025, to 2030 if all participants find it useful and meaningful, but not beyond.
Q: Will Ocean 100 Dialogues be its own legal entity?
- No, this is not anticipated in the near future. The objective is not to build a new institution, but to connect science to the ocean-based private sector to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable ocean economy, through the acceleration of existing initiatives or the creation of new ones if deemed appropriate.
Q: Will the Ocean 100 Dialogues expect sustainability commitments from the participating companies?
- Yes, this is a science-business dialogue, with commitments to be identified and developed collaboratively.
- Commitments should emerge from the scientific consensus and shared discussions.
Q: Which specific sustainability commitments are anticipated to emerge from the Dialogues?
- Some efforts may be to accelerate existing commitments while others to identify new ones. This will happen as a result of dialogue and co-creation between the science and participating companies.
- We would envisage sustainability commitments emerging that have a global ocean-wide impact, in some cases an industry-wide impact and company-specific efforts.
- We have proposed broad categories of ocean-wide opportunities that this group could collectively address at one or more of these levels: climate change, marine biodiversity loss and equity. The specific company commitments to help address these would be co-developed together.