“OHI is a gateway for countries to determine priorities and knowledge gaps; develop integrated and strategic management plans; and track progress towards meeting global mandates, such as SDGs. Looking forward, I hope to create a community of practice that we can transfer our management skills, knowledge, technologies, and tools to that results in widespread use and recognition of OHI as a framework to assess ocean health and management efforts.”
- Erich Pacheco, CI Ocean Health Index Director
Learn about how the health of our oceans is being measured.
- What is the Ocean Health Index (OHI)?
- Key elements of the OHI framework
- What are the practical uses of the OHI framework?
Speaker: Erich J. Pacheco
What is Ocean Health Index?
- a quantitative, repeatable, transparent and comprehensive tool that measures, tracks sustainable ocean use with a common language to inform decision-making
Why do we need an Ocean Health Index?
-- Because we need a heathy ocean. A healthy ocean - sustainably delivers a range of benefits both now and in the future.
What is the optimal sum of outputs the ocean can deliver understanding that these resources are fixed?
Objective: Change business as usual:
1. Integrating various indicators
2. Evaluating cumulative pressures and resilience
3. Identifying interactions between components
How do we compare economic information to ecological information?
-- So we synthesized all these information in a single language and provide ten different goals.
10 human goals: and Ocean Dashboard
1. Food provision (harvesting and producing seafood sustinably)
2. Artisanal Fishing Opportunities (Ensuring food for local communities)
3. Natural Products (Harvesting non-food ocean resources sustinably)
4. Carbon Storage (Preserving habitats that absorb carbon)
5. Coastal Protection (Preserving habitats that safeguard shores)
6. Livelihood and Economies (Sustaining jobs, wages, and revenues of coastal economies)
7. Tourism and Recreation (Maintaining the attraction of coastal destinations)
8. Sense of Place (Protecting iconic species and special places)
9. Clean Waters (Minimizing pollution)
10. Biodiversity (Supporting the health of marine ecosystems and species)
> Pollution
chemical pollution
nutrient pollution
pathogen pollution
trash
--- Artisanal definition, pertaining to or noting a person skilled in an applied art: ----
Use lots of data to analyze each of these components we give it a score form 0-100. 100 meaning you reached a reference point
Components of Goal Scores
Present Status (50%)
Likely future status (50%)
Initially they made global assessments.. but not all criteria are applicable to every coastal region soooo they made independent assessments.
OHI+ of my beloved country:
While final OHI scores are valuable information, the process of conducting an OHI assessment can be as valuable as the final results. This is because during an OHI assessment you will bring together meaningful ocean health information from many disciplines. In doing so, you will have a census of existing information and will also identify knowledge and data gaps. Further, conducting an OHI+ assessment can engage many different groups, including research institutions, government agencies, policy groups, non-governmental organizations, and both the civil and private sectors.
Blue Economy Webinar Series: Measuring Ocean Health for Sustainability from PEMSEA on Vimeo.
Sources:
http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/
https://ohi-science.org/
pemsea.org
http://pemsea.org/publications/manuals-guides-and-webinars/blue-economy-webinar-series-measuring-ocean-health
