Martin Koehring - Global Sustainability and Ocean Expert

Economist Impact's 10th annual World Ocean Summit and Expo in Lisbon in late February and early March will feature at least 180 speakers and 1,500 attendees with a focus on “Tackling the greatest challenges facing the ocean: climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution”. Ahead of the summit the World Ocean Initiative highlights blogs from some of the speakers.

Economist Impact's World Ocean Summit (February 27th-March 1st in Lisbon) celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. I am looking forward to moderating many exciting sessions at the summit, on diverse topics from closing the finance gap to meet SDG14 and scaling private-sector blue finance to harnessing “blue biotechnology” and developing blue carbon projects.

I recently spoke with Dieter Brockmeyer and Christian Salow for their "Two the power of MORE" podcast to explain how to unlock the power of the ocean to address the three major planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity, and pollution.

The World Ocean Summit in Lisbon at the end of February and early March will bring the ocean community together to inspire ocean solutions. This year will be vital in making progress on building a sustainable ocean economy in order to tackle the three interconnected planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink and our biggest hope in the fight against climate change. Tune in to the latest episode of Beyond Business with Wärtsilä as I talk with Atte Palomäki and Andrea Morgante about how to build a sustainable ocean economy.

A new year - a new opportunity to build momentum for a strong sustainability agenda. In a new blog post for Economist Impact's Sustainability Project, I highlight the top 5 sustainability and climate trends to watch in 2023, and why stronger collaboration will be required to accelerate progress this year.

As 2022 draws to a close, Economist Impact's World Ocean Initiative celebrates some of the key achievements of the year, including progress on a global plastics treaty and the acceleration of blue carbon markets.

The time to start building better is now. Population growth and rising demand for housing mean construction is expanding at a faster rate than efforts to reduce energy consumption. But only a tiny fraction of properties are carbon neutral. Next week I will be moderating a virtual panel discussion on “Constructing change".

Three inspiring innovators, leading the way for a sustainable ocean economy, have won the World Ocean Initiative’s Ocean Changemakers Challenge, supported by Destination Canada. The competition aims to showcase the outstanding changemakers—mainly early-career researchers or professionals—working to develop business solutions to ocean-related sustainability challenges.

Tomorrow I will moderate Economist Impact’s Sustainable Cities Talk. According to data from the World Bank, cities are already home to 56% of the global population—and that percentage will continue to grow in the coming decades. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that cities also contribute to 75% of global carbon emissions.

COP27 represents the last realistic chance to adopt decisive climate action to limit global heating to 1.5°C. The Egyptian COP27 Presidency has set four key focus areas: mitigation, adaptation, finance and collaboration. In a new preview on Economist Impact’s Sustainability Project platform I explain why COP27 is a critical event for climate action.

Consumer companies have talked about sustainability for decades, but the need for immediate action has never been stronger. Join me and industry leaders in this webinar to hear about a new study we just released that explores the potential of collaboration to scale sustainability initiatives.

I have published a blog that summarises my keynote speech at the recent 30th anniversary celebration of the John Nurminen Foundation. It focuses on shifting the ocean narrative from negative connotations to positive ones.

I recently spoke about the importance of ocean ecosystems at the Valuing Natural Capital Conference 2022 in Geneva, organised by Geneva Macro Labs. My summary blog has just been published on Economist Impact's Sustainability Project.

I was invited by the John Nurminen Foundation to provide the keynote speech at its 30th anniversary in Helsinki. The foundation does lots of great work to save the Baltic Sea and its heritage for future generations. I was honoured to speak about the opportunities of building a sustainable ocean economy in the Baltic Sea and beyond.

I was in Halifax, Canada to moderate seven sessions at Economist Impact's World Ocean Tech and Innovation Summit, including sessions on blue economy resilience, innovation alliances, changes in the Arctic, blue carbon to mitigate climate change, and big data and predictive analytics. We also announced the winners of the World Ocean Initiative’s Ocean Changemakers Challenge.

World Maritime Day is celebrated in September to focus attention on the importance of shipping and other maritime activities. It provides an opportunity to reflect on how the shipping industry can play a critical role in leveraging ‘greener’ innovations towards solving decarbonisation challenges.

I moderated the session “How Can We Develop Blue Economy Opportunities?” at the Virtual Island Summit 2022, organised by Island Innovation. Following an opening keynote by Dr Keith Mitchell, former prime minister of Grenada, I was joined by four excellent panellists.

Next week I will speak at the "Valuing Natural Capital Conference" in Geneva, hosted by Geneva Macro Labs in collaboration with ILO, UNITAR, UNCDF, Harvard University, FootPrint Coalition and ServiceNow. My presentation will focus on the role of marine natural capital in mitigating climate change, drawing on insights from my work leading Economist Impact's World Ocean Initiative.

It was encouraging to see the source-to-sea approach making waves at this year’s World Water Week, organised by Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). However, ocean solutions could still be featured more prominently. Here are my five takeaways.