Alaska Blue Economy White Paper Featured by Wilson Center

A new white paper produced by the Alaska Blue Economy Center is featured on the Wilson Center website. ABEC is a partnership between the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, the UAF Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization, and other UAF partners.

An excerpt from the published paper is below.

“For many years economists have recognized the need to value the planet’s ecosystem services to make informed financial and policy decisions based on nature’s contributions to the global economy. While understanding of ecosystem services has improved through increased scientific focus and technological advancements, the acceleration of climate change has continued. Regenerative business models that protect and restore the ecosystems in which they operate have never been more important and offer valuable solutions to address the predicament the planet is experiencing. Nowhere is this truer than for the oceans, Earth’s largest heat and carbon sink. Nonetheless, current estimates indicate that just 1% of global climate finance is dedicated to the oceans, which represents a significant opportunity for capital investment. Now is the time to rethink current climate policies and redirect investment towards an ocean-centric strategy.

As of 2011, the value of the planet’s ecosystem services to humans was estimated at over $120 trillion annually. While this valuation is subject to debate and not thought of as absolute, it is in part limited by the ability to assign a price to those ecosystem services that can be scientifically quantified. In this regard, it has been anecdotally noted that more is known about outer space than about the oceans, and it stands to reason that marine ecosystems are significantly undervalued. Nonetheless, new technologies are rapidly advancing understanding of the oceans through the ability to observe, measure, map, and predict ways that benefit climate mitigation strategies.”

Read the full white paper at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/towards-ocean-centric-climate-adaptation-arctic.

For more information on ABEC, please contact Justin Sternberg at jcsternberg@alaska.edu.

 

A boat loads fishing nets in Cordova. Photo by Amanda Byrd