Above the water, container ships keep the world’s freight traffic moving; at the bottom of the ocean, petabytes of data rush through the submarine cables. Oceans are vital for the transport of goods and data – but they are not in good shape.
How can we reconcile the benefits for people and the protection of the oceans? How can the sea be sustainably used and protected? The Danish VELUX Fonden is funding the project ‘Ocean Infrastructures – A Study of how the Sea is Governed Today’ (OCINFRA) with the equivalent of 790,000 Euros. The project is a collaboration between Professor Kimberley Peters of the HIFMB and Professor Christian Bueger, political scientist at the University of Copenhagen, and the SafeSeas research network.
Sustainable Governance of Oceans
The project addresses the vital issue of how the oceans can be used sustainably and governed more effectively. Developing an innovative analytical framework centred on the concept of infrastructures. “Infrastructures” Kimberley Peters says, “are often invisible, and in the background. The team on this project will bring infrastructures to the front and centre of analysis through 3 linked case studies that interrogate infrastructural flows for effective oceanic governance: maritime shipping routes, undersea cables and marine oil spills”.
“In using and governing the oceans we face a range of fundamental dilemmas. Through this project we will be able to identify how we can better cope with these through developing ocean infrastructures that protect our oceans in the future,” Christian Bueger says.
The project will run for four years and is expected to start in early 2022.