OceanCanada Cross-Cutting Themes Created (2016)
A key objective of the OceanCanada partnership is to integrate knowledge across academics, community stakeholders, and organizations (private and public sectors) and offer a new avenue for data sharing, cross-fertilization of ideas, co-creation of knowledge, and collaborative building of research and governance capacity for the benefit of both current and future generations of Canadians. At our May 2016 conference, OceanCanada members devoted much time to devising plans to integrate the research of our existing Working Groups: Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic (regional); and National Data and Integrated Scenarios, Law and Policy, and Knowledge Mobilization (national).Three new cross-cutting themes (CCTs) were created at this meeting – Access to Resources, Governance, and Changing Oceans, all in the context of ocean health and community wellbeing. Since our May conference, we have been working hard to advance the work of all groups to provide a more integrated approach to issues related to OceanCanada’s mandate. The integrative and cross-cutting nature of these themes is captured in the OceanCanada Partnership roof. As depicted in this figure, the goal is to conduct research that cuts across scales and Working Groups.
Structure for Cross-Cutting Themes
Each cross-cutting theme (CCT) has a coordinator who works with OceanCanada Director Rashid Sumaila to develop integrative projects, and draw people and resources from across the OceanCanada membership to execute the identified projects. Megan Bailey, CRC in Integrated Ocean and Coastal Governance at Dalhousie University, coordinates the Access to Resources CCT; Carie Hoover, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, leads the Governance CCT; and the Changing Oceans CCT is headed by William Cheung, Director of Science for the Nereus Program, University of British Columbia. The first project for the cross-cutting themes is to develop a workshop on the three themes leading to one or more publications that integrate the regional and national groups’ existing research. Work has begun on this initiative with teleconferencing and the hiring of research assistants. Together with the OceanCanada Director, theme coordinators will inspire, stimulate, and motivate all OceanCanada members to actively engage in cross-cutting and integrative work that meets the goals of OceanCanada.