The ocean is not a desert!
Dr. Elise Huffer here reports on another of the exciting “satellite projects” implemented in the Pacific by Ocean States network members. Read More …
Summer break for OceanStates
With summer break rapidly approaching, the OceanStates research team will be taking a month-long pause in July. Read More …
Project update: One Ocean Week
In this project update blog post, read about OceanStates’ participation in the One Ocean Week with partners from the University of the South Pacific who visited us in Bergen last month. Written by Håkon Larsen Last month, the OceanStates project was fortunate to host a diverse delegation of students and staff from the University of Read More …
Maritime borders in a rising sea
In this blogpost, Ernst Nordtveit draws upon legal perspectives to discuss projections of sea level rise and reflect upon regional strategies in the Pacific that view maritime boundaries “not as ambulatory but as fixed borders”. Read More …
Atoll Ways of Being with the Ocean
A perspective from low laying atolls brings climate discourses and practical realities together. Tokelau experiences with political intervensions employed by overseas agents range historically from instruments of demographic control to more recent measures related to transport and access to revenue from the EEZ. Tensions between different ways of being with the ocean are increasingly apparent. Read More …
Ocean Talanoa
In July 2022 the OceanStates project had the privilege of bringing 28 students from the University of the South Pacific on board the tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl of Bergen, for a three-week voyage in Fiji waters. In this blogpost, you can read about how students from across the world engaged in exercises of knowledge sharing through the oceanic practice of ‘talanoa’ on this voyage together. Read More …
Big Ocean States: Reclaiming Sovereignty through Maritime Borders
In this blogpost, Milla Vaha provides an analysis of state sovereignty and maritime borders with a focus on the large ocean states of the Pacific, that are “powerfully exercising their right to self-determination” through a reinterpretation of international law and statehood in the age of climate change and sea-level rise. Read More …
A King of King Tides
In December 2021, several places in the Western Pacific concurrently faced extreme weather events in the form of king tides. Vandhna Kumar offers here an analysis of the reports that circulated on social media and provides insights of climate variabilities to discuss how the events became linked with narratives of climate change. Read More …
Coastal resilience during the pandemic lockdown in Fiji
In this post, Håkon Larsen discusses the crucial role of coastal resources in Fiji during the COVID-19 pandemic, by drawing on some of the materials from his master’s thesis “The Organic Island” that explores the creative and resilient dimensions of subsistence economics. Read More …
Water, Oceans and Climate Change: Legal challenges, local perspectives and important examples to learn from
Dr Joanna Siekiera was recently invited to speak at a Special Lecture on Climate Change and its Impact on Small Island Developing States: The Example of the Pacific at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) by Professor David Attard, Director of the IMO International Maritime Law Institute. Here is what she had to say. Read More …