They will conduct the first citizen consultation on ocean health in Chile

The IDEAL Center and the SECOS Millennium Institute are coming together and inviting all people over 16 years of age to be part of this initiative, which will allow to know the country’s perception of the state of the sea.

As human activities threaten the integrity and health of coastal marine ecosystems, ocean protection has become a primary public policy objective at various levels.

In this context, from January to March 2022, people over the age of 16 will be able to answer, online, the first survey on ocean health on the country’s coast, which aims to achieve broad representation within the national territory. .

Citizen inquiry will be hosted on the domain https://encuesta.chileoceano.cl/ And on the same site, updated information will be provided with the main findings. Through these findings, citizens are expected to understand how citizens relate to the marine and coastal space, how they see its health, what threats they identify to the health of the ocean, and how they relate the health of the sea to them. private luxury.

The concept of ocean health is not explicitly incorporated into decisions about the sustainability of the seas. Together, this prevents an adequate social response on how to protect and restore these ecosystems and thus protect the ecosystem services – components of nature that contribute to human well-being – that they support and that are vital to human societies,” comments. Dr. Laura Nahuelhual, Initiative Coordinator and Researcher at the Center for Dynamic Research of the High Latitude Marine Ecosystems (IDEAL) of the University of Australia in Chile (UACh) and the Millennium Institute for Coastal Social Ecology (SECOS).

In order to incorporate this concept into the national context, and in a joint effort to create public awareness of the importance of ocean health in Chile, IDEAL and the SECOS Millennium Institute built the Chile Ocean Health Index (IDSO). It is an indicator that brings together the academy, the state, the private sector, and society in the various stages of construction. Likewise, it is expected to contribute to public policies related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 14, which proposes “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources”, implying a broad and long-term social commitment. , of which the centers pretend to be a part.

“Overall, efforts to protect the world’s oceans have failed because, among other things, the complexity of the pathways and dynamics of coastal marine ecosystems has not been duly considered,” notes the academic also from the UACh Department of Economics and a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Environmental Studies. and Sustainable Human Development (CEAM-UACh). In addition, the researcher comments that the interactions between the marine ecosystem and the social system and how the latter depends on and affects the health of the oceans have not been taken into account.

“For us as SECOS Millennium Institute, this study is very important because it is the first of its kind to be done on a large scale. In this we are interested in knowing how people relate to the sea and how they see different human impacts and ocean health, which will yield results that are relevant to the work we are doing. as an institution,” adds Stefan Gelcic, Director of SECOS, Academy of Biological Sciences at the Catholic University and a CAPES researcher.

Ocean Health Index

IDSO is a scientific assessment framework that measures ocean health through ten simple indicators. It was developed by the University of California, Santa Barbara and is periodically calculated for the world’s oceans. In addition, it allows independent evaluations to be carried out by adapting the methodology to local standards. It is based on the assertion that a healthy ocean is one that sustainably provides a range of benefits to people, now and in the future.

The consultation tool developed by the IDEAL Center and SECOS aims to obtain background information for the adaptation of IDSO for Chile, and to adjust indicators with variables affecting ocean health at smaller scales. The establishment of a periodic Ocean Health Assessment in Chile allows us to assess the stresses, condition and resilience of our oceans while at the same time monitoring whether our actions improve or worsen the health of the seas in the assessed areas.

If you want to answer the query, you can do so through here.