Ocean Visions Summit, Day Two: Moving from “Engagement” to “Agency”
Brad Warren and Giulia Belotti at the Ocean Visions Summit in Vancouver, BC.
By Sarah Schumann
As the field of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) jumps from the laboratory into the field, can it advance in a way that avoids crushing coastal communities?
That was the unspoken question at the heart of a panel discussion on “Working with Communities at the Ocean-Science Nexus” at the Ocean Visions Summit in Vancouver, BC yesterday.
Having seen my New England fishing community bruised by a decade of disorienting, disempowering, and often degrading “engagement” in the rushed buildout of offshore wind energy, I was eager to be blown away by some truly radical visions for community empowerment.
The panelists didn’t let me down. But my voice recorder did, and I failed to capture any of their insightful comments. So I cornered two of them over lunch to keep the conversation going.
Brad Warren is the executive director of Global Ocean Health, a Seattle-based nonprofit whose mission is to protect seafood supplies, coastal communities, and marine ecosystems from consequences of unchecked pollution. Brad was formerly the editor of Pacific Fishing magazine, and his grandparents were driven off the water by the damming of the Columbia River. His commitment to the community he affectionately calls “the waterfront” runs deep.
Giulia Belotti is a research associate at the University of British Columbia and a fellow at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University. Although she is based in Vancouver now, she grew up in a part of Italy that is infamous as the most polluted part of Europe. The high rates of cancer and birth defects she witnessed around her as a child gave rise to her lifelong commitment to environmental and social justice.
A Conversation about Community Agency
Sarah: During the panel, you said “We need to have conversations about the systems that build agency.” What did you mean by that?
Brad: Community engagement is the wrong language—the wrong concept. The question is not big enough… It's a woefully inadequate way to talk about something as important as this. The real question… is that the process does not give them agency. It’s like being in a car driven by somebody where your hands are not on the wheel and they’re a little crazy. It’s a recipe for people to get anxious. And it’s your livelihood at stake, if you’re a fisherman.
Giulia: That ties back into ownership. It’s such a central topic that we’re not talking about enough, because it’s such a taboo in this economic system, talking about co-ownership. Talking about having fishermen or farmers involved in these processes is such a taboo. And by “involved,” I don’t mean consulting them. I mean really co-owning these projects with the developer, whether that’s a private entity or the public. I think this question of ownership should really start making its way through, because otherwise communities are hardly going to have agency.
Sarah: Is the broader mCDR community on board with this, or do we have work to do?
Giulia: I do still have the feeling [that some startups] are still stuck in that construct of community engagement as consultation. Part of it is understandable because these companies or startups have very limited resources and very limited time… [Too often it’s] a tick-box exercise rather than meaningful relationship building.
Brad: What this industry of marine carbon dioxide removal is proposing to do may actually make a lot of sense. We don’t know for sure, yet. But it involves using the largest carbon pump on the surface of the planet to solve this colossal waste management problem that we have [i.e., carbon pollution]. That may turn out to be a good move for the health of the ocean itself, if it’s done right. It may turn out to be a bad move, if done badly. The difference between “well” and “badly” is going to come down to whether it’s managed in a responsible, well-built way.
Sarah: Okay, so what does it look like to do mCDR “in a responsible, well-built way”?
Brad: It’s going to require control rules with adaptive management provisions. It’s going to require the kinds of regionalized, community-based governance structures that characterize successful fisheries management. Because it’s a public trust resource…. You need a system of well-designed and adaptive control rules. You need a system of governance that deals in the communities who live with and depend on the ocean and have been part of this long, long conversation about how to look after it.
Sarah: And what does it look like to do mCDR “badly”?
Brad: The development of offshore wind with BOEM, which was a train wreck even before the first turbines were proposed. The system was just simply not fit for purpose. Never was. The structural and statutory limitations of BOEM itself are key to the problem. It’s not about the people being bad people. It’s about the system being ill-designed for the task it’s got… It’s not designed for the management of a public trust ocean resource. It’s really poor at that job. Fisheries management is much better at it… It's now common knowledge that if you’re going to do fisheries management, you deal in the people who depend on the ocean. It’s fundamental. You don’t just give them a chance to mouth off. You give them some form of agency.
Sarah: What have you seen at the Ocean Visions Summit that gives you hope that as mCDR matures, it will be done in a “responsible” way? Conversely, what evidence have you seen that it might be done “badly”?
Giulia: We always talk about innovation and new visions in marine CDR, and within CDR in general. But we think of that as being about technological innovations too much. We don’t think about the governance and social innovation that we need—in this field, but also in other fields and sectors. I feel like there should be more space for these conversations, and until I see those spaces created for these conversations, I’m not going to be hopeful. And I didn’t see this at Ocean Visions. There’s nothing about how we could govern this from a social-political-governance perspective.
Brad: I’m really impressed with the model that Ebb Carbon* represents, because of who they are and how they built the company and how they behaved in their engagement… The fundamentals of kindness, patience, and curiosity so infused the culture of that company that it’s made them faster than you could imagine. Rushing breaks things. You’re dealing with things that once you broke them, you can’t get them back. You break trust on the waterfront and it doesn’t usually come back… Every startup is a resource-constrained rushing machine. To be able, in that climate, to show up with the kind of decency, patience, kindness, and curiosity that they mustered—I’m impressed. That’s what gives me hope.
Sarah: What actions can fishermen take now to secure agency in mCDR as it matures?
Brad: They should get involved in the work to design a new management system. We need new law. We need new institutions.
Giulia: Organize in your community, with your peers and fellows. Just organize… We need to create coalitions… I feel like organizing should start to include not only a small group of people who have a specific interest—for instance, around fish and the resources they use—but also broader groups to actually have a voice and make a difference. I know that “organize” sounds so general. But we know that things have changed because of this. We’ve seen historical examples.
*Ebb Carbon is an mCDR startup that operates an electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement demonstration project in Sequim, Washington and is in the process of building out a larger pilot project in Port Angeles, Washington.
