Mercator Ocean International (MOi) hosts the European (EU) Coordination of the G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative (FSOI) Coordination Centre. The EU coordinator works with the other G7 FSOI coordinators to form a distributed Coordination Centre that implements the initiative’s activities under the guidance of the G7 FSOI National Focal Points and the Working Group.
The EU Coordination of the G7 FSOI is composed of the action coordinator, Dr Maria Hood and a communication officer. Dr Hood is fully integrated in the MOi team and is part of the scientific management. The EU coordination is funded through the EU under the EU4OceanObs project launched in November 2020. Entrusted to MOi by the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments, EU4OceanObs works to strengthen international ocean governance for enhanced collection, sharing and use of ocean observations for societal benefit on a global scale.
MOi also took the initiative to develop and maintain the G7 FSOI website launched in April 2021. For information on the activities of the EU coordination of the G7 FSOI, click here.
About the G7 and the FSOI
The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental organisation consisting of representatives from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union is also a member, holding all the privileges and obligations of membership but without the right to host or chair a summit.
In 2016, the G7 agreed to take an ambitious and holistic approach to tackling ocean issues, and developed the FSOI with 5 main action areas. These include on enhancing global ocean observations, and ocean assessments and reporting, improving data sharing infrastructure, regional observing capacity and political cooperation. The G7 FSOI offers a new mechanism to address the challenge of strengthening and sustaining ocean observations through the coordinated actions of the G7 members, who together fund more than half of global ocean observations.
The Initiative’s activities focus on resource mobilisation and international commitments to implement the ocean observing system, monitoring those commitments, and aligning them across the G7.
For more information, on the G7 FSOI activities, click here.
Link with GOOS and Ocean Decade
All G7 FSOI activities are developed through wide consultation across the G7 ocean observing communities and in close partnership with the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The G7 FSOI will also work to support the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development through its activities that will co-evolve with Ocean Decade’s programmes and projects. MOi is fully committed to the and lends its full support to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), which implements GOOS and is the global coordinator of the Ocean Decade.
In addition to facilitating the EU coordination of the G7 FSOI, MOi is one of the three French members of EuroGOOS, the European component of GOOS. MOi’s Director General, Pierre Bahurel is also the Chair of ETOOFS (Expert Team on Operational Oceanography and Forecasting Systems) which is an international group of GOOS and IOC-UNESCO.