Expression of Interest for the World Ocean Assessment workshop

FCT is promoting an expression of interest addressed to the national scientific community to participate in the regional workshop for the North Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, within the Regular Process for the Global Report and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment (World Ocean Assessment), including socioeconomic aspects, now in its third cycle.

The workshop will take place in The Hague, the Netherlands, between 28 and 30 November 2022, in a face-to-face format, but online participation is also possible. The workshop is open to the scientific community with interest in the area, and experts who wish to participate should apply by filling out a form that will be made available by FCT to those who express interest in participating. The deadline to apply to the workshop is October 5, at 12 PM EST, so expressions of interest should be addressed to the FCT before this date, to the email: victor (at) silva @ fct.pt.

The Regular Process is a global mechanism established by the United Nations (UN) in 2002 and is a process promoted by the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea. It aims to regularly assess environmental, economic and social aspects of the state of the world's oceans, both current and foreseeable. More specifically, the Regular Process aims to contribute to the strengthening of regular scientific assessment of the state of the marine environment in order to strengthen the scientific basis for policy-making. The World Ocean Assessment (WOA) is the main output of the Regular Process.

The WOA is the world's only integrated global ocean assessment that covers social, economic and environmental aspects. A collective and ongoing effort by hundreds of global experts, it serves as the basis for governments and policy makers around the world to make informed decisions on ocean issues in alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The first WOA cycle(WOAI) took place between 2010-2014 (reporting), the second (WOA II) between 2016-2020(reporting) and the third(WOAIII) started in 2021 and will end in 2025. Two phases of regional workshops will take place as part of the development of WOAIII: The first phase, running until the end of 2022, promotes capacity building activities and discussion of the thematic areas to be focused on in WOAIII; The second phase will take place after approval of the WOAIII structure and will promote more in-depth discussions for the development of the report under this third cycle.

Portugal is represented in this process by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the FCT, as national focal points, and by the Portuguese expert to the Group of Experts, Professor Maria João Bebianno from CIMA-Centre for Marine and Environmental Research, University of Algarve.