132. Knowing the Ocean: Knowledge production practices and interventions in and for the endangered ocean
Jacqueline Ashkin, Leiden University; Sarah Rose Bieszczad, Leiden University; Francesco Colona, Radboud University;
With climate in breakdown, knowledge production systems are faced with the challenge of understanding how the global ocean system is changing in response to anthropogenic factors and to what extent this newly generated knowledge can inform ocean management decisions. Governance bodies oftentimes present knowledge and informed intervention in unidirectional and normative fashion: policy ambitions, e.g. the UN Decade of Ocean Science, contain the underlying assumption that better knowledge creates improved conditions for decision-making. But whose knowledge(s) about the ocean are included in these interventions, and in what forms? How are certain (disciplinary, expert, local) knowledges valued, and in what (political, economic, historical) contexts does this privileging of certain knowledges over others arise and/or become reinforced? Building on these questions, we explore how their corresponding knowledge production practices and interventions navigate potential tensions arising from the need to 'acknowledge catastrophe' while nevertheless 'imagining possibility' (Tsing et. al. 2019) for oceanic futures.
This panel welcomes contributions that engage with the complex dimensions of knowledge production practices for intervening in an endangered ocean on an increasingly damaged planet, whether historically or in contemporary practice. These contributions may concern, but are not limited to, interventions on issues such as: coastal adaptation, aquaculture and fisheries, marine conservation and restoration, marine geoengineering, resource extraction, and renewable energy production. We encourage contributions making different perspectives visible, including those of local and indigenous peoples, policymakers, scientists, and others, while also acknowledging the more-than-human socio-materialities embedded within these knowledge production practices and interventions in and for the endangered ocean.
Keywords: Forms and Practices of Expertise, Governance and Public Policy, Environmental/Multispecies Studies, ocean, climate knowledge, environmental intervention
