12 Innovative and Surprising Solutions for Saving Our Seas

August 8, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

By Alexander Berry, Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum (Public License)

The Ocean is critical to protecting the natural world as well as human life.
Digital platform Uplink is announcing it’s Ocean Cohort of 12 innovations tackling the biggest issues facing our seas.
Solutions from six continents tackle a range of challenges, from freight shipping and illegal fishing, to plastic pollution and the degradation of precious underwater reef habitats.

The Ocean is critical to protecting the natural world and preserving the futures of the billions of people who rely on it for their survival. It’s so important, the United Nations selected Life Below Water as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) key for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all.

Life Below Water also inspired the first mission for entrepreneurs and change-makers developing new innovations and solutions through UpLink, a digital platform for scaling innovation and driving progress toward the SDGs.

12 of these Uplink innovators recently presented their ideas to a panel of experts and judges from across the industry at the World Economic Forum’s Virtual Ocean Dialogues. Their solutions tackle challenges from freight shipping and illegal fishing to plastic pollution and the degradation of precious underwater reef habitats.

Whether you are in Malaysia, Brazil, the US, Portugal, Fiji or Palau and you have a solution to an ocean issue, UpLink gives you the opportunity to connect to a global community that can help you.”
—Kristian Teleki, Director, Friends of Ocean Action

The World Economic Forum and Uplink will work extensively with the cohort over the next 4 months to scale the innovators’ impact, highlighting their work through social media, presenting them at ocean-focused events, and introducing them to experts and potential funders who can accelerate their ideas.

UpLink is on a mission to surface and accelerate ocean innovators from around the world. Here is the first cohort answering the call:

Cubex Global – This digital marketplace for sea freight can maximize empty shipping container space while simultaneously protecting the planet with a more sustainable approach to ocean transport.
Oceanium – This innovative biotech start-up is developing products like biopackaging from sustainably-farmed seaweed.
Recyglo – This waste management and data analytics platform tackles plastic pollution at the source across southeast Asia.
Madiba & Nature – These innovators recycle plastic waste and inspire entrepreneurs in communities across Cameroon.
Unseenlabs – This special maritime surveillance service is breaking new ground in the fight against illegal fishing.
OLSPS – This analytics company is preventing illegal fishing through a fishery data management system that can record and report marine and vessel-based information.
Global Coralition – A coral reef restoration group using art as a vehicle to help alleviate poverty, implement water and waste solutions, and empower communities to activate grassroots climate change action.
Life Out Of Plastic – A clean-up campaign that empowers citizens to take action against plastic pollution.
Plastic LOOP – Innovators reducing plastic in dumpsites by formalizing waste picking.
The FlipFlopi Project – The world’s first sailing boat made entirely from waste plastic, created to bring attention to the problems of single-waste plastic.
Seafood Commons – A collaboration for the transparent and sustainable distribution of seafood worldwide.
Pinovo – A zero-emission circular sandblasting system that prevents paint-based microplastics on rigs (and other marine assets) from entering the ocean.

60% Chance of Above-Normal 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season

June 6, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)’s Climate Prediction Center is predicting a 60 percent chance that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will be above-normal. There is a 30 percent chance of a near-normal season and just a 10 percent chance of a below-normal season.

We can expect a likely range of 13-19 named storms, of which 6-10 are expected to become hurricanes. Of those hurricanes, 3-6 are expected to become major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 and peaks from mid-August to late October.

NOAA is predicting ENSO neutral or La Niña conditions, along with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, coupled with reduced vertical wind shear, weaker tropical Atlantic trade winds, and an enhanced west African monsoon.

NOAA will upgrade the hurricane-specific Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast system (HWRF) and the Hurricanes in a Multi-scale Ocean coupled Non-hydrostatic model (HMON) models this summer. The National Hurricane Center provides up-to-date forecasts, data, and tools.

Cargo Shipping & Pollution

May 4, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Cargo shipping creates huge amounts of air and marine pollution. What’s being done to change this given the large number of everyday goods that travel this way?
—JJ, Newark, NJ

The vast majority of goods we use and enjoy have spent at least some time traveling on cargo ships. In fact, such ships facilitate more than 80 percent of global trade. Unfortunately, these huge ships that ply the world’s oceans and waterways burn lots of fossil fuels—some individual ships burn upwards of 100 tons of oil a day. If the global cargo shipping industry were a country, it would rank sixth overall in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (higher than South Korea, Iran, and Canada).

*Some 80 percent of goods for sale around the world make their way from point A to B on a cargo ship, so cleaning up this industry is key to greening the overall economy. Credit: Chuttersnap, Unsplash.*

Cargo ships have several other negative environmental effects as well. They also emit large amounts of fine particles, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—all bad for us and our environment. As if the emissions weren’t bad enough, cargo ships also run into marine life at an alarming rate: Ship strikes are one of the leading causes of death for many of the world’s whale species.

But as bad as all this sounds, cargo shipping is one of the most efficient and eco-friendly ways to get items from point A to B. Big ships emit only about half as much CO2 as trains, one-fifth as much as trucks and only one-fiftieth of what airplanes would emit to transport the same load.

Nonetheless, environmental concerns continue to dog cargo shipping. In response, shipping companies have started to employ innovative strategies to save fuel and reduce pollution, such as so-called “slow steaming” whereby ships can burn less fuel and reduce emissions by traveling more slowly than usual.

Transitioning to cleaner fuels—such as liquified natural gas (LNG)—is another obvious short-term solution, but it can only get us so far. Another band-aid fix is the installation of exhaust scrubbers, which spray a fine mist of water to remove pollutants from ships’ exhaust before they can make their way up into the atmosphere. But scrubbers require energy, which leads to more fuel being burned. Also, the wastewater they generate is sometimes dumped into the ocean, which negatively affects marine organisms.

Longer term, environmental advocates are hoping for the wholesale decarbonization of the shipping industry. Plans are on the table for clean-burning hydrogen-powered cargo ships. Meanwhile, the first electrically-propelled cargo ship, Norway’s Yara Birkeland, is nearing completion. This 260-foot long vessel will carry chemicals and fertilizer on a relatively short 30-mile route.

Despite these advances, cargo shipping will continue releasing large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere for the foreseeable future. Though battery-powered ships are finally moving off the drawing board and into the water, their range is simply too limited to allow for mass replacement of existing cargo fleets. The energy density of batteries will need to increase by a factor of ~30 before such replacements can begin taking place en masse. Given the likely slow pace of change, buying local is probably the average citizen’s best option for reducing shipping-based emissions in the short term.

CONTACTS: “The environmental cost of shipping stuff is huge…,” “CO2 emissions for shipping of goods,” “Shipping and climate change,” The uncounted cost of shipping’s environmental impact.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

Cargo shipping creates huge amounts of air and marine pollution. What’s being done to change this given the large number of everyday goods that travel this way? —JJ, Newark, NJ

Cargo shipping creates huge amounts of air and marine pollution. What’s being done to change this given the large number of everyday goods that travel this way?
—JJ, Newark, NJ