Fostering Internationalism through Marine Science (eBook)

Preface.- Background and motivation for this volume.- Outline of this book.- What to expect.- Introduction.- The role, history, and significance of scientific institutions in the development of national and international science: ICES and PICES.- PICES mission “To promote and coordinate marine scientific research in the North Pacific Ocean in order to advance scientific knowledge of the area concerned and of its living resources.”.- Founding principles.- How best to advance, apply, and disseminate scientific knowledge of the northern North Pacific Ocean?- Six member nations: Canada, Japan, People's Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Russia, and the USA.- What partnerships, inside and outside PICES, are critical to its mission?- Integrating fisheries science and oceanography without stock assessments (role of scientific advice).- What is International Science?- Growing challenges in marine affairs/science.- Potential barriers to collaboration (historical, geographical, political, financial, cultural).- Balancing individual versus collaborative achievement.- Incentives for continued engagement.- Capacity building, social capital.- Bridging diverse academic and government perspectives.- Climate science and its applications as a unifying focus.- Fusing Regional and National Science into International Science.- Internationalism and science-based resource management.- The interplay between national and international programs.- National perspectives on purpose, scope and mandates.- Institutional challenges to cooperative programs.- Bridging disciplines (oceanography, fisheries science, ecosystems).- A common language in databases?- Internal structural challenges (e.g. working groups).- Relations with external scientific and management organizations.- Building institutional and scientific capacity.- Standardization, pluralism and shared methodology.- The role of strong committee and working group chairs.- Taking the Lead on Climate Change .- First major interdisciplinary science initiative: CCCC (Climate Change and Carrying Capacity, or “The Four Cs”).- Consequences of climate variability on the ecosystems of the subarctic Pacific.- Enabling factors, accomplishments, unfinished business.- Integrating the Social and Natural Sciences.- Second major interdisciplinary science initiative: FUTURE (Forecasting and Understanding Trends, Uncertainty and Responses of North Pacific Ecosystems).- Challenges of incorporating social science into marine science.- Integrating diverse disciplinary interests and language.- Navigating Marine Science in an Age of Climate Change.- The evolution of PICES’ agenda.- Data synthesis; databases; Bering Sea Indicators; North Pacific Ecosystem Status Report.- CCCC, FUTURE.- Opportunities in modeling catastrophes.- Scientific institutions are best when they successfully balance cooperation and contention in science.- Barriers to advancing, applying, and disseminating science are many and varied, but scientific institutions provide the common tools necessary for overcoming them.- The historical, current, and future roles for building long-term commitments by both individual scientists and governments, in staying the course in increasingly troubled waters.