Alongside the quarterly seminars, CMR has also hosted additional seminars which captures the research done by CMR members or collaborators.
Dr Larry Swatuk
Urban Development and the water nexus - Climate issues globally and for the Nelson Mandela Bay
Monday, 28 October 2024 | 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom and Venue (Hybrid event)
Larry Swatuk is Professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) at the University of Waterloo where he is also Director of the Master of Development Practice (MDP) program. Dr. Swatuk holds a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from Dalhousie University. At Waterloo, he is cross-appointmented to the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, and the School of Planning. In addition, he sits on the senior management committee of the University's Water Institute. Dr. Swatuk came to the University of Waterloo from the University of Botswana where he spent eleven years, seven on the main campus in Gaborone as Lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies and four as Associate Professor and Director of the Natural Resources Governance Unit in the Okavango Research Institute in Maun, Botswana. Among other things, Swatuk sits on the Board of Directors of Oxfam Canada, is Vice-President of the Environmental Peace building Association, and is Extraordinary Professor in the Institute of Water Studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. His research focuses on the challenges of governing and managing natural resources at various scales with a primary focus on freshwater resourcesin the Global South. Among his recent publications is the co-authored (with Dr. Natasha Tang Kai) book Prioritizing the Environment in Urban Sustainability Planning: Policies and Practices of Canadian Cities (Palgrave, 2023), and the multi-authored, open-access book Towards the Blue-Green City: Building Urban Water Resilience (Pretoria: WaterResearch Commission, 2021).
The presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of the presentation.
Professor Erik Franckx
Access to courts under national and international law: A civil dichotomy with a salty international exception
Tuesday, 17 September 2024 | 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom and Venue (Hybrid event)
Unlike civil courts on the national level, where rulings in absentia are often times accepted, international courts and tribunals require the consent of States before they can look into the merits of an inter-state dispute. The International Court of Justice, for instance, which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, even though well-established and generally accepted by the world community of States, nevertheless lacks jurisdiction. And it is only after the disputing States have consented to grant jurisdiction, that the Court will be able to look into the merits of the case. To this international system based on consent, the law of the sea forms today an otable exception.
Professor Franckx is a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, vissiting professor at Ghen University, honorary professor at the Nelson Mandela University, as well as professeur émérite at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He holds teaching assignments at the Sorbonne Université Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; the University of Akureyri, Iceland; and the Nelson Mandela University. He is appointed by Belgium as an expert in marine scientific research for use in special arbitration under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 Convention) since 2004, as expert in maritime boundary delimitation to the International Hydrographic Organization since 2005, and as arbitrator under the 1982 Convention starting in 2014. For publications, see: https://researchportal.vub.be/nl/persons/erik-franckx/publications/.
The presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of the presentation.
Professor Peter Jones
Incentive divesity is key to the more effective and equitable governance of marine protected areas
Tuesday, 01 August 2024 | 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom platform
A target to conserve 30% of oceans by designating marine protected areas (MPAs) has been agreed, yet the effectiveness of existing MPAs is often low, with few weakly implemented restrictions on impacting uses. CMR honorary Professor Jones, will be presenting a multiple case study empirical analysis of the governance of 50 MPAs which demonstrates that:
(a) there is strong correlation between the effectiveness of MPAs and the number of governance incentives used;
(b) combinations of economic, legal, communication, knowledge and participatory incentives are shown to be employed in effective MPAs and mostly needed in less effective MPAs;
(c) whilst some incentives are frequently identified as being important to promote effectiveness, no particular 'magic wand' incentive or 'best practice' combinations of incentives guarantee this.
The findings from this study shows that effectiveness is not determined by any specific governance approaches or incentives, but rather the combination of a diversity of functionally integrated incentives, which interact with and support one another to promote MPA effectiveness and resilience, i.e. diversity is the key to resilience, both of species in ecosystems and incentives in governance systems.
The presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of the presentation.
Professor Mike Elliot and Professor Alan Whitfield
Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles - Learn from the Experts
Tuesday, 30 July 2024 | 10:30 - 12:30 | Zoom platform
Key aspects that were discussed in this online event:
Publishing cycle and models | Ethics and plagiarism | Selecting a journal | Bibliometrics | Artificial Intelligence | Planning the article | General structure of a research article | Authorship: Do's and don'ts | Explanation of each part: abstract, keywords, introduction, methods.... | Submission | Reviewing process | Acceptance/rejection
Prof Elliot is the Director for International Estuirine and Coastal Specialists (IECS) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Hull. Prof Whitfield is a Chief Scientist Emeritus and Research Associate for the South African Instutute for Aquatic Biodiversity (NRF-SAIAB).
The presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of the presentation.
Ms Nina Faure Beaulieu
Developing a Shark and Ray Conservation Plan for South Africa
Tuesday, 1 August 2023 | 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom platform
In this seminar (2023 Marine Protected Area (MPA) Day), Ms Nina Faure Beaulieu has presented on the findings from her recently published article “A systematic conservation plan identifying critical areas for improved chondrichthyan protection in South Africa”. Owing to the wide ranging distributions of many sharks and rays as well as a lack of occurrence data, they are often overlooked in MPA design. Ensemble models were developed for 87 species' distributions, which informed a systematic conservation planning analysis The current representation of sharks and rays in South Africa's current network of 41 MPAs were assessed and priority areas for protection were identified.
Ms Faure Beaulieu joined the WILDTRUST team as a research assistant on one of their shark and ray protection projects after completing her Masters degree in 2021. This is where she started working on building a shark and ray conservation plan for South Africa under the guidance of Professor Mandy Lombard. This work involved collaborating with a wide network of shark and ray scientists across the country, developing distribution models for these species and then using these spatial data for a conservation plan.
Ms Beaulieu's presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of her presentation.
Professor Rose Boswell
Event organized by the SARCHI Ocean Cultures and Heritage Programme and the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research (CMR) (Four Seminars)
Heritage is often perceived as the tangible artifact and legacy of culturally defined groups within a nation state. However, cultural heritage can be intangible, multiply situated and implicated in macrosocial and macroeconomic processes. Heritage is also diversely located. Our research thus far locates cultural heritage in institutional cultural practices, underwater, in natural sites, everyday coastal objects and food. The findings suggest that more holistic and decolonial approaches are needed for heritage conservation and management. Rapid and extensive coastal development have also drawn our attention, the construction of ports, mega ports and other urban infrastructure is impacting on coastal communities and heritage. In the following we offer brief presentations and reflections, as well as insight into our research and findings thus far, indicating the importance of social science in global ocean strategy and research.
Thursday, 22 September 2022 | 11:00 – 12:00 | Zoom platform
Seminar 1 - Theme: Ports, Mega Ports and Services
Please click here to access the recording of seminar 1.
Thursday, 22 September | 13:00 – 14:00
Seminar 2 - Theme: Underwater Cultural Heritage, Heritage in Maputo and Heritage in Namibia
Please click here to access the recording of seminar 2.
Friday, 23 September | 11:00-12:00
Seminar 3 - Theme: The Senses
Please click here to access the recording of seminar 3.
Friday, 23 September | 13:00-14:00
Seminar 4 - Theme: Capacity Building and Learning in Cultural Heritage Research
Please click here to access the recording of seminar 4.
Professor Erik Franckx
Lawyers and Scientists under the Law of the Sea: Transdisciplinary Ideal and Ensuing Practice
Monday, 19 September 2022 | 13:00-14:00 | Zoom and Venue (Hybrid event)
This talk intends to substantiate this general observation by looking more closely at how the introduction of science in the definition of the continental shelf started a long and tortuous journey for courts and tribunals trying to determine how best to cope with these scientific aspects when deciding the many maritime delimitation cases that were subsequently submitted to them by States wanting to settle, once and for all, particular maritime boundary disputes existing between them. Subsequently, the experience of the Advisory Body of Experts on the Law of the Sea (ABE-LOS), an organ created by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, which consisted precisely of a mix of scientists and lawyers and whose task it was to provide advice on the IOC’s role in relation to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, will be the focus of this contribution. In both instances, the relationship between science and law will be explored.
Prof Franckx's presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of his presentation.
Dr David Kaplan
Reducing plastic waste and other negative environmental impacts from drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) used by tropical tuna purse seine fisheries
Thursday, 18 August 2022 | 12:00-13:00 | Zoom and Venue (Hybrid event)
Tropical tuna purse-seine fishing vessels use an estimated - 100,000 drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) per year worldwide to aggregate tunas and facilitate their capture. These man-made drifting objects are associated with a number of negative environmental impacts, including capture of juvenile tunas, higher bycatch rates, potential for ghost fishing and contribution to marine plastic debris and abandoned, lost or discarded (ALD) fishing equipment that can beach in sensitive coastal habitats such as coral reefs.
In this presentation, Dr Kaplan reviews work that colleagues, collaborators and himself that finds viable solutions to these issues with a particular focus on reducing marine debris.
Dr Kaplan's presentation is available via this link. Please click here to access the recording of his presentation.