This is our update from the latest UN Ocean Conference this year:

1. our CEO, Dr. Mas Achmad Santosa, discussed the importance of international cooperation in enforcement to scuttle the illicit operation of industrial scale fishing around the globe with Gunnar Stølsvik of the Blue Justice and Sofiane Mahjoub of the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific.

2. we co-organized, with the Norwegian Government, a high level talk titled “A Decade of Ocean Action: Catalyzing Global Partnerships for Sustainability” attended by the Norwegian Minister of International Development, H.E. Åsmund Grøver Aukrust; Indonesia’s Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, H.E. Sakti Wahyu Trenggono and Vice Minister of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, H.E. Arif Havas Oegroseno.

3. we supported the high-level launching of Indonesia’s coral bond as an innovative financing mechanism to support the conservation of coral reefs in Indonesia;

4. our program officer, Ghina Raihanah Tadjoedin, spoke at an event titled “Bridging Ocean Realities” onboard Germany’s research vessel METEOR;

5. we co-organized a side event titled “The Human Dimension of SDG 14: Strengthening Human Rights for Sustainable Ocean” with the BlueRights Irini Papanicolopulu Anna Petrig and Université Cote d’Azur. Here our program manager Jeremia Humolong Prasetya shared his views on jurisdictional complexities in protecting Indonesian migrants working onboard foreign fishing vessels.

We close our trip with a fullday meeting with the INTERPOL. It was a productive meeting and we managed to craft a sketch on our collaboration framework on several topics, among others, carbon trading safeguards mechanisms and maritime crime, including the human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.

This trip provided me with valuable lessons:
1. Collaboration is the utmost important in all aspects of ocean governance and geographical borders become less relevant.
2. Plenty of ocean initiative being discussed however attention over compliance and enforcement was, unfortunately, minimum.