BLUE ECONOMY? WHAT'S THAT?

Recently there has been more and more reference to the Blue Economy, appearing in Gunter Pauli's book "The Blue Economy, 10 years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs" and his Zero Emissions Research Initiatives: (ZERI).

On the Permies website here Wesley Roe posted the following 8 years ago...

Gunter Pauli suggests by emulating nature we can evolve from an economy based on scarcity to an economy based on abundance---the cascading, nutrient rich, Blue Economy.  Founder of Zero Emissions Research Initiatives (ZERI) Global Network, Gunter Pauli pioneered the concept of waste being seen as a resource that with creative thinking, can be used to create multiple enterprises from singular ones, with benefits for the economy and the environment. Pauli is fond of saying that returns on investment from these kinds of business models far exceed those of companies like Microsoft.  

The Blue Economy began as a project to find one hundred of the best nature-inspired technologies that could effect the economies of the world, while sustainably providing basic human needs.  Starting with over 2000 peer review articles, Dr. Pauli found 340 innovations that could be bundled into systems that function the way ecosystems do, that were then reviewed by a team of scientists, corporate strategists, expert financiers, and public policy makers.  For the 100 Innovations described, The Blue Economy estimates an employment potential of 100 million jobs.  The plausibility of this estimate is enhanced by the fact that there are today more people employed in renewable energies than in the oil and gas industries combined.

A terrific enhancement of this theory is the inclusion of  the notion of Biomimicry, "the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.". 

The Blue Economy is a clear pathway forward and AUSMEPA and Rightship are contributing to this through their shipping emissions monitoring tool the Maritime Emissions Portal (MEP) here.

MEP Tool for Satellite monitoring of emissions for managers and decision makers

It's time to get the world back into balance.

www.ausmepa.org.au

FOR TEACHERS; INTERNATIONAL OCEAN LITERACY STUDENT SURVEY

The Ocean Literacy project has been in play for many years. Although it began and has been developed in the northern hemisphere an AUSMEPA consultant along with other Aussies had the opportunity to participate in its early stage development and later promoting its value within Australian marine education.

Over the last 3 years an unfunded survey planning project, the International Ocean Literacy Survey (IOLS) was developed with the help of a vast array of top notch researchers, communicators, teachers and more. 

The IOLS is now ready to roll out and we need the help of teachers and students in Australia to add value to the standard of Ocean Literacy across the world. To learn more about pedagogical practices for Ocean Literacy see here.

If you have students who are within the age range of 15-17 years old, it would be brilliant to have them help the cause by completing this survey. 

Below please view the invitation to contribute.
______________________________________________________________________

Please distribute the appropriate survey link below to educators who can administer and complete the survey to students 15-17 years old before March 22, 2019. 

Here is what you can do: If you have access to any students ages 15-17 that are native speakers of the languages listed below, please have them complete the survey online. Attached are information letters for both parents and students, and a script to read to students before they take the survey. They can also be found at https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-instructions.  If you don’t have access to students but still want to help, contact the teachers and informal educators you know, and ask them to give the survey to their students. We need at least 200 respondents in each language to be able to analyze the data. 

Feel free to translate the attached letters and script if necessary when you distribute the survey.

Please be sure to send us an email telling us that you are helping so that we can acknowledge you in future publications.

What happens with the data? Data from this field test will be analyzed centrally at Lawrence Hall of Science. We will provide findings back to the community as soon as the analyses are complete. Partners (like you!) who help us distribute the survey will be able to access their own data. We will continue testing the survey until we are satisfied that we have a truly valid and reliable, open-source, comprehensive International Ocean Literacy Survey that can be freely used by educators around the world. We are very close to realizing this goal!

Links to the IOLS Version 4 in various languages:

1.     Catalan: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-catalan

2.     Chilean: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-Chilean

3.     Chinese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-chinese

4.     Dutch: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-dutch

5.     English: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-English

6.     Greek: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-greek

7.     Japanese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-japanese

8.     Korean: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-Korean

9.     Polish: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-polish

10.  Portuguese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-portuguese

11.  Spanish: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-spanish

12.  Tagalog: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-tagalog

If you would like to translate the survey into another language, and you are confident that you can gather more than 200 responses, please contact us.

Thanks so much for your help!

And thanks to the IOLS partner organizations that support the development of the Survey:

·      Asia Marine Educators Association

·      Blue School—Ministry of Sea of Portugal

·      Canadian Network for Ocean Education

·      Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)

·      Marine Conservation Society

·      Marine Learning Center of Japan

·      National Marine Educators Association

·      National Ocean Sciences Bowl

·      National Taiwan Ocean University

·      Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean

·      Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile Centro de Conservación Marina

·      Surfline

·      The Hydrous

·      The Oceanographic Society of Japan

·      World Ocean Observatory

Warm regards,

Craig Strang, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley

Géraldine Fauville, Stanford University

Mac Cannady, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley

www.ausmepa.org.au