Nineteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

According to the UN 2030 Agenda Accelerator, a holistic and aligned approach is necessary to help the development of partnerships to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 17 stresses that global efforts are needed, as well as partnerships between a whole range of different organizations such as governmental entities (regional and national), businesses, universities, NGOs, etc. It might, to some extent, be coherent to argue that local solutions are more effective in tackling global problems especially when one considers that many of the international goals and targets like the SDGs themselves are voluntary and nations are not obliged to adhere to them. There are specific contexts however, where working at the local level might be very difficult or even impossible and one of these is marine conservation. The marine environment presents an ecosystemic context that has no boundaries, and therefore needs to be tackled internationally. What happens for example in the Indian Ocean may eventually affect the Mediterranean Sea. The study deals with a marine conservation project located in the waters around Normandy, France. In this respect, the project context is not local but international. Many different stakeholders have interests in the outcome of the project, some of them international, which makes working only locally difficult. In this respect working globally is recommended to better address a marine conservation problem that might initially seem local.