An Accessible Ocean

Everyone is an ocean stakeholder. Open access to marine data and knowledge will maximize the quality of the information mined, packaged and communicated to support management, innovation and decision-making, enabling everyone to understand what we need to do in order to create the ocean we want. At the same time ocean governance frameworks should be designed in ways that they can effectively be informed by science-society-policy interfaces and enable participation of different relevant stakeholders.

Opening up access to marine data, knowledge and technology will reduce inequality in ocean science capacity and support sound and transparent assessments of ocean change. It will provide a common basis for transparent decision-making in global ocean governance and identification of new solutions for the future ocean we want. Skills and opportunities must be developed for knowledge creation and transfer, particularly in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs). This will immeasurably enrich ocean science for sustainable ocean governance around the world. Besides open access infrastructures, data and analyses, decision-support systems for ocean stakeholders (the scientific community, governments, educators, the private sector and the general public) will allow for scientifically informed and up to date decision-making guided by the sustainable development goals.